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2 Cracks appear in Thai aviation-hub
hopes By David Fullbrook
BANGKOK - Bangkok's shiny new
international airport, replete with what is
claimed to be the world's largest single-terminal
passenger building, was designed to transform
Thailand into a world-class regional aviation hub.
Nearly five months after Suvarnabhumi's grand
opening, the highly anticipated facility has
instead come to symbolize the country at its
worst, riddled with incompetence, alleged
corruption and political infighting, undermining
the Thailand's global reputation as a safe travel
destination.
Surface
cracks have appeared in an estimated 5% of the
airport's runways and taxiways, forcing traffic
controllers to reduce the scheduled number of
takeoffs and landings, according to the Airports
Authority of Thailand, the partially privatized
state agency that manages the facility. In recent
weeks, certain incoming flights have been diverted
to U-Tapao military air base, where planes have
waited for hours before getting clearance finally
to land at Suvarnabhumi.
Officials talk of
finding the root cause of the cracks within weeks,
though a senior engineer at a leading European
engineering practice thinks the process involved
will more likely take months. Some worry about the
integrity of any assessment carried out by local
engineers involved in the original construction
and are calling for an independent assessment led
by international experts. At worst, if full-scale
resurfacing is required, the runways could be out
of action for 18 months, according to the European
engineer.
Sumet Jumsai, a leading
architect who heads Sumet Jumsai Associates, said:
"Of course it can be corrected - it's an
engineering problem, basically anything which is
not on piles tends to sink. It's like putting a
weight on a piece of jelly, it sinks, that's
normal. If you pile it, it stops sinking. The
terminal building is on piles; it doesn't sink."
To clear the way for international
flights, the authority board approved on January
11 a plan to move domestic and certain
budget-carrier international flights to the
decommissioned Don Muang airport on a voluntary
basis, though without a clear action plan that
probably won't happen until April at the earliest.
International airline representatives maintain
that they are confident in Suvarnabhumi's safety
during takeoff and landing, but are starting to
carp about the extra costs, delays and passenger
inconvenience.
"The lack of definitive
statements, there might be more clarity on that
and to make clear the plan to remedy them. Only
with a clear, proper plan will airlines be able to
coordinate and minimize disruption to passengers,"
said Andrew Herdman, head of the Association of
Asia Pacific Airlines, which represents several
regional flag carriers.
Meanwhile, the
airport's main terminal is also riddled with
construction problems. The airports authority has
admitted that poor construction was likely a
factor in the closure of 11 out of 51 aerobridges
leading into the airport. Rain has leaked through
the airport's glass roof, and engineering flaws
have compromised the newfangled cooling system,
making the facility uncomfortably hot during the
day. The lack of sufficient toilet facilities has
spawned a national joke that queues are longer at
restrooms than at check-in and immigration
counters.
Passengers are in effect using
an unfinished airport, made obvious to those
passing the hundreds of construction workers
rushing to finish the job in the early hours of
every night. Although one main rationale for
building Suvarnabhumi and decommissioning the
vintage Don Muang airport was to accommodate
fast-growing international arrivals - particularly
the ever rising number of regional tourists - many
observers were surprised to learn that
Suvarnabhumi was operating near its full
45-million-passenger capacity after less than
three months in operation.
To be sure,
Suvarnabhumi is not alone in suffering from
teething troubles. Hong Kong's massive new
airport, then lauded for its new-age architecture,
suffered a rocky opening in 1997, including cracks
around certain taxiways and chaos in luggage
delivery. Kuala Lumpur's new airport failed as its
state designers intended to attract new
international traffic - indeed, major airlines
such as British Airways even scrapped their
services to the Malaysian capital soon after the
new facility was open because of complaints about
a tilted competitive playing field in favor of the
national carrier Malaysia Airlines.
Japan's second-largest airport, Kansai
International, serving Osaka and Kobe, which
opened in 1994, was built on an artificial island,
which subsided much faster than engineers had
predicted, requiring massive remedial efforts that
turned it into one of the most expensive
engineering projects in the history of a country
used to expensive engineering projects.
There are certain glimmers of hope for
Suvarnabhumi. Baggage problems have already been
resolved, and previous long delays for freight at
customs have been at least temporarily resolved by
scrapping the new electronic system and
substituting old-fashioned manual processing.
A viaduct for express and local train
services connecting the airport to downtown is
going up rapidly, holding promise that
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