Alternate airports for APEC

The PNG 2018 APEC Authority will be arranging alternate airports so APEC member economies can park their aircrafts during the summit.

PNG 2018 APEC Authority CEO, Chris Hawkins, says Jackson’s International Airport does not have sufficient capacity to cater for all State and charter aircrafts.

He said this during the recent meeting with hotel CEOs and managers on preparations for the APEC 2018 Leaders' Summit Week.

“Every economy or every country brings their own aircraft with their own leader. We don’t have the capacity to park every one of them (so) we’ll do what we did in other years and we’ll fly other aircrafts that we can’t park we’ll fly them onto Cairns, to Lae, to Hagen, wherever there’s space and that’s a commercial arrangement for each of these economies or private sector visitors,” said Hawkins.

Currently, there is only sufficient capacity to transfer delegates through the peak times of the Leaders Summit Week, which will see additional fights coming in from Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Hawkins said Jackson’s will be able to cater for the super powers who will be attending.

“We do have space to park Air Force One (USA), the other aircraft the second aircraft that the US President has; as well as the Chinese President, the Russian President, and where we can we will  accommodate as many leaders and CEOs to park their aircraft around the airport,” he said.

Author: 
Cedric Patjole