Irreversible

Answers: who can stop the switch, and until when?

Hong Kong's new airport at Chek Lap Kok took seven years to build and cost about HK$155 billion, by the Chief Executive's account at the opening ceremony on 2 July.^[1] The Airport Authority was to run it, and a government steering committee chaired by the Chief Secretary^[1] was the "overall monitor" of whether it was ready.^[2] The equipment, facilities and staff of the old airport, Kai Tak, were to move across on a Sunday night, for the new one to open the next morning.^[2]

In January 1998, with the passenger terminal and the main cargo terminal running late, the steering committee moved the opening from April to Monday 6 July, when air traffic would be lighter and the roads quiet for the move the night before.^[2] Two months earlier the Chief Secretary had written to the Authority's chairman that the date, "once announced, will be irreversible".^[1]

The steering committee met on Saturday 4 July, two days out. The flight information display system tells everyone at an airport which flight lands when and at which gate. The Authority's readiness report said this one "was sufficiently stable". The chair's brief from the government's co-ordination office said the same system had been down 9 percent of the time in a test run from 14 to 27 June, and called that not satisfactory.^[1] Members heard the switch to the standby had been tried on 2 July. They didn't seem to know that the standby's own procedure let the switch be considered only once someone had decided the main system would be down for more than three hours.^[1]

Witnesses told the Legislative Council's Select Committee that on the Monday the system that assigns aircraft to parking stands began to malfunction at 2:00 am, and that at about 7:00 am the screen of expected arrivals froze.^[1] The first emergency meeting was at 10:00 am, "to ascertain what the problems were". At 10:30 am the airport management director and the head of IT chose to restart the flight information system rather than switch to the standby. Neither the Authority's board nor the steering committee had known the standby had only limited functions.^[1] From about noon to about 5 pm the apron was full, and again from 8 to 11 pm, and aircraft waited for a stand.^[2] By about 7:45 pm an emergency coordination centre and the contingency measures were working "in a generally satisfactory manner".^[1] At the cargo terminal, hundreds of trucks queued for up to 12 hours, and normal cargo handling didn't return until 24 August.^[1]

The Commission of Inquiry on the New Airport counted 42 problems, three of them major: the flight information system, the cargo handling system and baggage. Some of the 39 smaller ones were isolated, and the effects of each "snowballed and spiralled" when they met each other and the trouble with the flight information and cargo handling systems.^[2] The Select Committee found the Authority's contingency plans "patchy and disorganized".^[1]

The Commission found the decision to open on 6 July "proper and wise". It also found that neither the Authority nor the cargo terminal's operator asked for a postponement, and that putting the opening off by about two months could have avoided the chaos.^[2] The Select Committee held the steering committee's chair responsible for not making sure every sign of risk was weighed once the date was set.^[1] It credited the overnight move, done without mishap, to the deputy chief executive's "organising abilities".^[1]

On 4 July the 9 percent was in the chair's brief, and the standby's own procedure set out the three-hour rule. By the Select Committee's account, nobody involved knew of any way the date could be put off, "apart from severe inclement weather".^[1]