A consultant who studied plans to build a third runway at Chek Lap Kok airport has recommend that Hong Kong enter a pact with Southeast Asia's other major air-traffic hubs to ease the region's crowded airspace.
London-based aviation adviser NATS said in a report the Airport Authority released yesterday that better information sharing between the region's big cities could let passengers spend less time in holding patterns or sitting on the tarmac.
The firm urged local authorities to spearhead the creation of a regional airport 'cluster' to better exchange information when bad weather or other events snarl air traffic.
'There is currently no means of regulating traffic within the Southeast Asian area except by local agreements between area control centres,' said NATS, which had previously studied the implications of building a new landing strip at the busy Lantau Island airport.
'This lack of capacity management allows significant traffic peaks to develop,' the report continued.
The 13-year-old Hong Kong International Airport, which is running at 90 per cent of capacity at peak hours, has already formed a network with airports in Taiwan and Japan since receiving the report.
