Suvarnabhumi International Airport 'Up and Running'

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The following appears in the BANGKOK POST:

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New Airport Up and Running

 

The new $3.9 billion Suvarnabhumi international airport opened early Thursday as most citizens were asleep, with little hoopla - and none at all from the project's final backer, ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra who was ousted in a coup.

 

"This will be a quiet opening," said Air Chief Marshal Chalit Pukpasuk, the deputy chief of Thailand's Council of Democratic Reform (CDR), the junta that seized power on September 19, ousting Thaksin and his cabinet.

 

Thaksin, a billionaire businessman known for his "can do" approach to governance, had strongly identified his administration with Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi Airport, that is scheduled to officially open at 1100 GMT am Thursday.

 

"The name Suvarnabhumi was given by the king, so we will need the king's attendance for the grand opening" later on, Chalit told a press conference at the airport.

 

Nonetheless, Chalit insisted the airport was "100 per cent ready for operations."

 

The new airport, which handled 155 domestic flights on Wednesday, will need to service 813 flights on its first day of full operations on Thursday. Snafus are expected.

 

Both Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur experienced "teething problems" when they pushed the opening of their new airports.

 

Suvarnabhumi has a capacity to serve 40 million passengers a year, or 110,000 passengers a day.

 

When a second phase is completed in an estimated three years, Suvarnabhumi is to be five times larger than Don Muang International Airport, firming up Bangkok's position as an aviation and tourism hub for the region.

 

Thai Airways International (THAI), the national carrier, operated the last official commercial flight out of Don Muang, Bangkok's 90-year-old airport heading for Shanghai. It was to be the first airline to land at Suvaranabhumi on Thursday, at 7:05 a.m. (2405 GMT) with flight TG 662 from New Delhi.

 

Suvarnabhumi, or "Golden Land," as Marco Polo named Southeast Asia in his famous travels, has cost Thailand $3.9 billion to construct and has arguably been in the works since the early 1970s when the government purchased 3,238 hectares for it in eastern Bangkok.

 

Construction of Suvarnabhumi actually began about 10 years ago, although former premier Thaksin, who first came to power in 2001, rushed the project through to completion.

 

Thaksin staged a "symbolic" opening of the new airport on Sept 29 last year to prove its "technical" readiness. Critics called the event a publicity stunt to meet Thaksin's previously set deadline for the project.

 

Thaksin set a new deadline for June this year, which has finally stretched to Sept 28.

 

One of the reasons cited for the coup was mounting corruption. Suvarnabhumi has been the source of at least one public corruption scandal so far in the purchase of a security checking system for baggage.

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And This:

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The following appears in THE NATION:

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SUVARNABHUMI

Just listen to our noisy nightmare

 

As Airport Opens Today, Resident Challenges Director to Pay a Visit

 

Fifty-year-old Wanida Sanwanitchpattana wants to invite Suvarnabhumi Airport director Somchai Swasdipol to spend a night at her place. Free room and board, nice breakfast included.

 

Sound generous? Maybe, but Wanida has an ulterior motive.

 

"I want him to know what one jet plane after another diving down from the sky sounds like," said Wanida, whose two-storey home sits right next to the fence surrounding Suvarnabhumi Airport. "He said on TV that he has done his best to resolve all of the problems affecting the surrounding communities. I haven't seen the shadow of a single airport official since construction started."

 

To some people, the official opening of Suvarnabhumi Airport may bring with it a sense of relief or delight. To others, it might even be a dream come true. But to Wanida and thousands of other families living under the airport's flight path, the dawn opening will seem more like a nightmare.

 

Wanida had her first taste of deafening jet noise on September 15, when Thai Airways ran 12 domestic flights to and from Suvarnabhumi. People inside her house had to stop whatever conversations they were having. Phone calls were cut short, and TVs went mute.

 

Since that day, Wanida has not had a moment of peace because of the 20 or so flights that pass above her roof each day. From today onward, however, the Airports of Thailand expects to operate as many as 76 flights per hour.

 

"I learnt that my house is in the flight path [two weeks ago], after the soft opening [of the airport]. Nobody informed me before," she said.

 

Moo Baan Romreudee, where Wanida lives, is one of two housing estates that almost every aircraft has to fly over before landing. While many people have eagerly awaited the landing of Lufthansa freighter LH 8442, the very first flight to land at the new airport, marking the beginning of full-scale operations today, Wanida has dreaded the moment. After LH 8442, 649 more flights will land and take off from Suvarnabhumi Airport today.

 

"I really don't want the day to come," said Wanida. "Even these days, when the airport is not yet fully operational, I cannot sleep well because aircraft pass right over the roof of my house."

 

Adding insult to in jury, the heavy rains of the past few days have brought floodwaters right up to the doorsteps of many of the homes in the estate, including Wanida's. Until last year, flooding had never been a problem.

 

Wanida said that if possible, she wanted the Airports of Thailand (AOT) to expropriate her two-story house and 50 square wah of land, saying she could not bear to stay there much longer.

 

"If the AOT improved my house so that it could resist the noise, I doubt I would be able to afford the air conditioning bills because we would have to leave it on the whole day [because the windows would have to stay shut]," she said.

 

When The Nation visited this housing estate on Rom Klao Road on Tuesday, residents still had no idea who would be able to solve all the problems that had come with the new airport. Some point out last year, representatives of a consultant company visited to survey the communities surrounding the airport. That was the first and the last chance residents had to actually talk in person with someone representing the airport.

 

However, as Wanida pointed out, no one was able to report any problems because they had not experienced any at that stage. All the people could do was voice their concerns about the possibility of noise pollution.

 

The residents of the housing estate stood with their feet almost inundated by the floodwater that was gradually seeping from a waste-water drainage pipeline. Klong Sam Prawet, which runs near their community, has flooded all the roads it runs through.

 

Suradej Benjathikul, Wanida's neighbour, said this year was the second year that Romreudee housing estate had been flooded with water from Klong Sam Prawet. Suradej said the water flowed more quickly through the klong before the new airport was built.

 

Though construction on the airport began in 2002, it was not until late 2004 that the 20,000-rai Nong Ngu Hao swamp was fully reclaimed. Paijen Maksuwan, director of the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) which tried to build an irrigation system to prevent flooding around the airport, said that about 20,000 rai of flood-retention area had disappeared beneath Suvarnabhumi. The 78-metre-wide and 12-km-long irrigation canal will not be complete until mid-2008.

 

"During the construction period, the [flooding] situation could not be helped," he said.

 

The inauguration today of the new airport might strike some as a moment of national pride, but for the airport's neighbours, like Suradej and Wanida, today marks the day when their quality of life takes a nose-dive.

 

"Come back and let me know who can help us," Wanida said.

 

Pennapa Hongthong

 

The Nation