Shortly after taking off from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) en route to Kinmen yesterday, a TransAsia Airways ATR 72-600 airplane with 53 passengers and five crew members on board crashed into the Keelung River in Taipei.
The disaster shocked the nation, instantly reopening a decade-old debate as to whether Songshan airport ought to be relocated or simply closed down.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Chien-yu (陳建宇) was quick to delink the accident from the airport’s location, calling on the public not to confuse the two matters.
However, Chen, as well as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration as a whole, are advised to look into the issue of the airport’s future more carefully and not let politics or ideology obscure their judgement.
Granted, the cause of the crash remains subject to investigation and the state of the aircraft itself has nothing to do with the location of the airport, but as many onlookers pointed out, it appears the pilots were trying to guide the plane along the Keelung River to avoid crashing into nearby residential areas. So while the location itself might not have had anything to do with the crash, but in the event of a crash — as was the case yesterday — the location of the airport certainly was a key factor in the scale of the resulting casualties and collateral damage.
When the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in government, the Cabinet rejected developing Songshan for cross-strait flights because of environmental and national security concerns.
And as part of their campaigns for Taipei mayor, then-DPP candidates Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) in 2002 and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in 2006 pledged to relocate the airport outside the city and transform the site into Taipei’s “Central Park.”
Hsieh’s then-prospective Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponent Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) was himself a proponent of turning the airport site into a municipal park, a stance that later changed after he secured his party’s nomination.
Since Ma’s two terms as Taipei mayor, he has insisted that there should be an airport in the capital, and that it was important to develop it for cross-strait flights.
Songshan airport was Taiwan’s only international airport until 1979, when international flights were moved to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Songshan became a domestic airport, only resuming international services in 2008 when cross-strait flights were launched, realizing what Ma termed a goal of transforming the airport into a “capital city business airport.”
Under Ma, the central government has positioned the airport as a key link in a “Northeast Asia Golden Flight Circuit” of city airports including Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo, with former minister of transportation Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) saying that Songshan could serve as a hub for flights to and from northeastern Asia.
However, one question that must be asked is: How can Songshan airport strive to be a regional hub given its small size?
Amid a global trend in which many cities are relocating airports out of their downtown areas, it appears the nation’s policymakers have a myopic view, seeing only the convenience of Songshan’s downtown location while ignoring other issues that are just as, if not more, important, such as safety.
Songshan’s location not only limits the city’s development and bombards residents with noise from aircraft, but dramatically boosts the likelihood of catastrophic casualties and damages in case of an accident.
In light of the yesterday’s crash, it is time for the Ma administration to give the matter serious thought and allow for a rational debate on the issue of whether the airport should be relocated or closed.
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