The new international airport at Chek Lap Kok is the largest international cargo airport and the fifth largest for international passengers in the world. While being within only five hours flying time from half the world's population, it has consistently been voted the best airport in the world, both for passengers and for air cargo, since it opened in July 1998. "In this region, we are the dominant hub," says Dr Fung. "Indeed, we perceive ourselves to be not so much just the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) but the airport for the Pearl River Delta (PRD)."

That the airport is an economic driver - perhaps the single most important economic driver - in Hong Kong's commerce, goes without saying. It handles some nine million tonnes of air cargo annually, 27 per cent of the territory's total trade by value. But it is also an extraordinarily efficient, beautifully calibrated machine for moving people and cargo from one place to another. Every day thousands of people glide smoothly through the portals, pass through immigration stalls, board the waiting train that takes them to the gates to board aircraft belonging to any one of the 65 airlines that serve the airport. Incoming passengers find their way from the gate to the arrival hall within 20 minutes.

Behind the Scenes

All of this enormously complex behind-the-scenes activity is dependent entirely for smooth functioning on the Airport Operational Database System. This nerve centre encompasses a vast communications and security system linking everything from baggage management, to the public address system, to the closed circuit television security system - all directed from a single operations center. For most ordinary passengers the most obvious public manifestation of this system is the flight information display boards. Overhead monitors are spotted throughout the complex so that people are constantly informed on the up-to-the-minute arrivals and departures of aircraft.

Long forgotten are the glitches that marred the first week after the airport's official opening. "To be honest, the system was reasonably well-designed from the beginning and went through no more than the normal shakedown during any start of a large operation," says Dr Fung. "Now we have a large and sophisticated system that is working extremely smoothly."

The airport is constantly looking for ways to create even more interconnectivity. "We're talking about a common electronic platform, whereby all of the partners at the airport, whether they are ramp handlers or bus drivers or food servers, can actually talk to other people that provide services at the airport through a common communications platform. Right now people all have different protocols - it is very hard to get them talking together - and if you try to get them talking to one another, you need a lot of connections. We're in the initial stages of trying to create a computerised common platform, whereby everybody can hook in and share information. We hope that it will come into shape from 2005 onwards."

The other aspect of the airport's plans for using IT is finding better ways for people to access the data base so that passengers can get enhanced online information about their flights. Already, real time flight information is available for cargo flights, and passengers can get flight information via SMS on their mobile phones and pre-bookings of duty-free items via the airport's website. There is however, a vision to implement a Bluetooth-based system at the airport to provide passengers with timely information.

A Regional Hub

All of this backroom activity is aimed at making HKIA even more efficient so that it can better serve Hong Kong and the PRD, a region with a gross domestic product of more than US$100 billion. The key to improving Hong Kong's role is, says Dr Fung, making it easier to get in and out. "Our main strategy is to improve the outside world's accessibility to China and vice-versa, both for passengers and cargo." To do this HKIA plans to build on the airports fundamental assets of which the main ones are:

• Location - at the mouth of the PRD, central to all major areas of East Asia, and only five hours flying time to half of the world's population.
• Connectivity - with more than 65 airlines serving at least 140 destinations and within 50 kilometres of four other regional airports in Shenzhen, Macau, Guangzhou and Zuhai.
• Facilities - with some of the most modern and efficient plant and equipment of any airport, including an existing capability to serve some of the latest generations of aircraft on the drawing boards such as the Airbus A380.
• Experience - including many of the 900 people directly employed by the Airport Authority, who have worked for years both at Chek Lap Kok and at its predecessor, Kai Tak.

"To reinforce our regional position, we have been instrumental in establishing a forum called the A5 - which represents the five airports of the Delta," explains Dr Fung. "Our CEO, Dr David Pang, was its first chairman. The forum has met several times since its inception, and at its last meeting in Macau in November, it produced tangible, practical agreements on cooperation, in areas such as emergency assistance, flight diversions, and joint promotion.

"We also encourage our business partners - organisations like HACTL or Tradeport - to really think of themselves and us as the cargo and passenger hub of the region. Because a lot of our cargo comes from across the border, we encourage our partners to really go out into the PRD to persuade exporters to move cargo through Hong Kong's airport." Dr Fung noted that HACTL has plans to establish three container freight stations across the border in order to be closer to the sources of cargo, their customers. They will fill their boxes there and then send them to Hong Kong for shipment.

"What we are really trying to do with this airport is trying to make businessmen think of Hong Kong as a passenger hub. For anybody who would want to go from, say, London, to Kunming in China or Surabaya in Indonesia the first stop would be Hong Kong," he says. "It's a little bit like the way Chicago readily dominates the mid-west of the United States - people fly from secondary city to secondary city, not directly, but through Chicago because of the connectivity.

"Second, we want to make Hong Kong a cargo hub. Hong Kong is one of the biggest traders in the world and 27 per cent of the total trade by value is moving by air. We would like people to think of Hong Kong as the central storage and logistics supply centre for the region. To take one example: Say I'm a pharmaceutical company, and I need to stock refrigerated vaccines for 10 countries. What I don't want to do is to have stockpiles in 10 countries, because it is very expensive. So what we want to encourage people to do is really centralise their stock in Hong Kong. We're very efficient and can have a request on the next flight within a half a day."

To that end Dr Fung is pushing the government to help in the development of a 75-hectare logistic park on the northern part of Lantau Island, within 15 to 30 minutes driving time from the airport. That would allow companies to set up their own central warehouses and to act as their central stocking area for the entire PRD, indeed for the entire Asia-Pacific region. Dr Fung expects to see it in operations in three to five years, before the airport itself runs out of storage space. "All this is related to IT, because without IT what I'm proposing doesn't work."

Competition from Other Airports

Hong Kong must also keep a wary eye on other major airports in Asia. Kuala Lumpur opened its new international airport a few years ago, and Changi of Singapore retains its deserved reputation as one of the world's great air terminals. Guangzhou's state-of-the-art portal at Baiyun will open soon. "Every major airport in the region is obviously a competitor, but also a potential partner. We don't see the growth of regional airports so much as a threat than as a healthy indication of the growth of the industry in general. If anything, more intense competition will be found closer to home as the mainland improves its international connections." If airlines launch a host of new mainland routes, Chek Lap Kok could reach its capacity for moving passengers by 2012, instead of 2025 as currently predicted. On the other hand, the resumption of direct flights across Taiwan Straits will also impact business. But Dr Fung doesn't expect either to happen overnight.

"And we're working hard to mitigate the impact of any of these outcomes by, for example, expanding our market catchments into the mainland with more cross border ferries and bus services to Delta cities," he adds. Already, contractors based in Hong Kong pick up freight, mostly by ferry, from 22 cities around the PRD. They deliver the goods to a dock located on the airport grounds. The Airport hopes to do the same thing with passengers, and, indeed, last June, the authority signed an agreement to upgrade the existing passenger ferry terminal, that was mostly used by airport workers living in the Tuen Mun area and the New Territories. The upgraded facility will serve the Delta ports until a newer and permanent ferry terminal opens at the end of 2005. Meanwhile, passengers can now avail themselves of a special bus service to points in the Delta from a dedicated terminal with a passenger lounge and berths for 10 buses.

"We have a significant lead at present and we will work hard to consolidate and improve it. We feel that we are in the right place at exactly the right time, especially when you see what is happening in China since Beijing's accession to the World Trade Organisation. With the right people, hardware, and technology, everything is in place for a real takeoff."