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Anna Healy Fenton

THE PEARL RIVER DELTA is to get a commercial seaplane service, the first of its kind in China. Already established in Vancouver, Glasgow, Sydney, the Maldives, New York, and in the future London, it will add a new dimension to hopping between cities.
The service is within 20 minutes' flying time of a Shenzhen base, and it will start running in about a year's time.
Called Waterfront Air, co-founders Peter de Kantzow and business partner Canadian Michael Agopsowicz  have joined forces with the Shenzhen Airport Authority. 
'Now we're ready to go, the basic operational agreements are signed and we've passed all the pre requisite procedural and registration steps with the government,' says de Kantzow, a business development specialist who worked in the fashion industry, including with Calvin Klein, for many years. 
'We're backing it but needed a Chinese partner for the licence, so it's a China rather than a Hong Kong airline. 
'The Chinese side has bent over backwards to help us. They have provided  a hub base with maintenance and services which link to Shenzhen airport. Shenzhen airport is expanding fast, with their second runway already being built and their passenger numbers set to overtake Hong Kong's within five years.'
The Hong Kong authorities have also been enthusiastic, believing the new service will add value to Hong Kong's harbour.
This will not be the first time seaplanes have flown in Victoria Harbour. Up until the early 1960s, a regular service operated from Hong Kong to Macau and other places. In fact his father, Sydney de Kantzow, was the first to operate seaplanes out of Hong Kong in the late 1940s.  He and a prominent local family had an exclusive contract flying gold in and out of Macau, which remained a free-trade area and did not subscribe to any moratorium on gold trading during the currency wars.
In the late 1940s, Roy Farrell and Sydney Kantzow, who also founded Cathay Pacific, formed the Macau Air Transport Company  to take passengers from Macau to Hong Kong, initially using Catalina flying boats and later the Piaggio P136, an Italian six passenger twin engine aircraft. The service ran until December 1962, when silting in the Macau harbour made landing too difficult. That was the last scheduled seaplane flight to Macau.
This time around, a Canadian group is supplying the seaplanes. Pilots are being recruited from Canada and Australia, although Kantzow says they have received numerous applications from pilots closer to home. The planes, Twin Otter de Havilland DHC- 6- series 300s, have been around for 50 years. 'They're the workhorses of the skies for regional airlines, like the DC3s were in the '40s', he says.
These will be configured to take two pilots and 16 passengers, each with 10kg of luggage, for journeys of 15-20 minutes. Any excess baggage follows by ferry. The proportion of passengers to cargo can be varied. The lower the weight, the longer the distance that can be flown, to a maximum of six hours, but with only four passengers. That's the trade-off, explains de Kantzow, who sees long-term potential for flights of up an hour beyond Shenzhen.
As far as safety is concerned, 'we have chosen the twin-engine aircraft as they are much safer than a single engine', he says.
Seaplanes, used to rugged conditions in Canada, will be more than able to face the rigours of the South China Sea and Pearl River Delta, landing and taking off in as little as one metre of water. They can fly as high as 7,600 metres.  But they usually stick to the lower airspace alongside helicopters, up to 1,000 metres.  Typically, they fly at just 150 metres,  to see the views. The new service will not fly at night.
So who does de Kantzow expect the market to be? 'Experiential travellers and business travellers,' he says, adding they don't expect to compete with the helicopters on the Macau to Hong Kong and Shenzhen route. 
Safety in all operations will be paramount, he says, adding that seaplanes are safer than helicopters, less noisy and cheaper to run - and environmentally much cleaner than boats. 
Seaplane fares from Hong Kong to Macau will be HK$1,800 one way; the helicopter fare is HK$2,600. Other sector fares will be proportional for flight time and market conditions.
De Kantzow is sure it's the right place and the right time, with Guangzhou having enormous opportunities for conferences and all aspects of MICE business, plus Macau now has up to 60,000 hotel rooms. 
'The hotels will be looking to package the seaplane for trips to places like Hainan that are growing all the time as holiday destinations, so there's great potential for business/resort packages,' he says. 
But to start with he thinks it will chiefly appeal to business travellers in China. 'It will appeal to a niche business traveller, people who want to connect quickly,' he says. 
The Shenzhen government already plans to use the seaplanes to fly people up river from the city. It wants to showcase what the wider area has to offer.
'They want to use it as a marketing and branding tool, which gives us the potential to be able to fly further,' de Kantzow says. 'Basically, we can have seaplanes wherever there is water.' He sees China's hundreds of lakes and rivers as perfect for seaplanes.



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