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Wednesday September 27, 3:54 PMBusy? I'll show you busy, says Thai airport bossBANGKOK (Reuters) - With the clock ticking down to the opening of Bangkok's $4 billion new airport, Chotisak Asapaviriya mopped his brow with a handkerchief before lighting a cigarette and ordering a large bottle of beer.As head of Airports of Thailand and the man ultimately responsible for the move from the tired arrival halls of Bangkok's Don Muang to Suvarnabhumi, set to be Asia's largest airport, he could be forgiven for wanting some down time. The move, which involves shifting 1.8 million pieces of equipment -- much of it the space of a few hours -- across the sprawling metropolis, is being billed as one of the largest logistical operations in aviation history. "Busy? I'll show you busy," he told Reuters at a recent business lunch before removing six mobile phones from his pockets and lining them up on the table. "This one is for my friends, this one for my staff, this one for my customers and this one for ministers. This one is the prime minister and this one my wife. If I don't answer the last one, that's when I get big trouble," he said. Following last week's military coup, he no longer has to worry about calls from Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, now a virtual refugee in London, or his cabinet ministers, who have all been fired by the generals now in charge. But the pressure from staff and customers -- the airlines which will be flying in to Don Muang on Wednesday evening and out of Suvarnabhumi on Thursday morning -- has been unrelenting. With just weeks to go until the commercial opening of the $4 billion airport that will handle 45 million passengers a year, negotiations with the airlines on new landing charges were fractious and testy, to the point that both sides resorted to a slanging match through the media. "He spent so long as part of the British Commonwealth, but he still can't spell the word gentleman," Chotisak said of Albert Tjoeng, the Singapore-based International Air Transport Association spokesman who argued for a delay of the opening. But after 40 years on the drawing board and five years under construction, not to mention a "soft opening" a year ago, delays were not an option for Thaksin, a no-nonsense, self-styled CEO leader who prided himself on getting things done. In July, he decreed the futuristic steel-and-glass structure built on "Cobra Swamp" east of the capital would open on September 28, exactly six years after it received its official name from revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thaksin admitted Suvarnabhumi, which means "Golden Land" in Thai and touted as a rival to Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, could well run into some "inconveniences" in its early days. But after months spent studying major airport openings such as Hong Kong and Denver, and the problems both had with their baggage handling systems, Chotisak said he was confident everything would be alright on the night. If all else fails, 1,300 army cadets who have been charging round the giant terminal with armfuls of dummy luggage for the past few weeks would simply be called up to fill planes by hand, he said. "We have a fallback plan for everything." |
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