Singapore transport minister Khaw Boon Wan with youth aviation ambassadors from tertiary institutions
AS more people and airlines take to the skies, governments need to play a firm regulatory role to ensure that safety is not compromised, said Singapore’s transport minister Khaw Boon Wan during the opening address at the Singapore Airshow Aviation Leadership Summit yesterday.
According to Khaw, air travel in ASEAN member countries is expected to grow at 6.5 per cent over the next 20 years, surpassing the global average of 4.9 per cent, which could challenge existing infrastructure and air navigation service providers (ANSPs).
He said: “The liberalisation of the air services regime within ASEAN, which led to a proliferation of low cost carriers, has allowed many of our people to fly for the first time. The number of air passengers within ASEAN has tripled in the last decade, while the number of routes has grown by almost 40 per cent to more than 1,500 city pairs.”
Last week, the Philippines finally agreed to the ASEAN Open Sky Policy, paving the way for full third, fourth and fifth freedom rights for ASEAN carriers, which opens up Manila to all South-east Asian carriers.
He said: “Air traffic volumes are rising, especially on the back of the growing middle class in emerging economies. However, airport capacity cannot increase overnight, and the volume of airspace for aircraft to operate is finite.”
Explaining the current situation, Khaw said: “At present, many of our ANSPs manage traffic solely in the confines of the airspace assigned to them. This is manageable with current traffic volumes, but as traffic increases, ANSPs should have sight of upstream traffic and coordinate with upstream ANSPs in order to optimise the overall flow of traffic.
“We need our airspaces to be better integrated so that air traffic can overall be more efficiently managed, and more importantly, safety can be enhanced even as our skies become more crowded,” he added.
Khaw emphasised that governments have a key role to play in this area and cited the example of the collaborative air traffic management system that will be implemented soon between major cities like Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong.
“We have taken some steps in this direction but clearly we can do more together. We must have resolve to make the hard decisions in the interest of aviation safety first and foremost,” stated Khaw.
