KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 14 — Malaysia was forced to lodge a protest with Singapore following the latter’s move to publicise its planned Instrument Landing System (ILS) for Seletar Airport located just over 2km from the coast of Johor’s Pasir Gudang.
On December 1, Singapore made public its intention to implement the system by January 3 next year, which Putrajaya said would inevitably affect the development of Pasir Gudang as it would be subject to the height restrictions of the ILS.
For decades, planes going into Seletar Airport would rely on visual approaches without the need of the ILS. So, what requires Singapore’s sudden transition to using ILS for Seletar, which has then triggered a dispute with its neighbour?
History of Seletar Airport
Completed in 1928 as a colonial British Royal Air Force station at the time, it later became Singapore’s first international airport until the opening of Changi Airport about 16km away in 1981.
Ever since then, Seletar has mainly operated as a general aviation airport, serving business and chartered flights as well as for training purposes.
Plans to upgrade the airport were mooted as far back as 2007 and were kicked off when Changi’s operator, Changi Airport Group (CAG) Pte Ltd, took over Seletar in 2009. CAG is fully-owned by Singapore’s Ministry of Finance.
By 2014, CAG and the Commercial Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) announced their intention to rebuild and expand Seletar, in a bid to boost Singapore’s position as an air travel hub in the region — which coincidentally includes competition such as Malaysia.
“With the growing demand for air travel and increased aircraft and passenger traffic at the Singapore air hub, there is a need to optimise the air hub's capacity.
“Smaller and slower aircraft, including turboprop aircraft... will be moved from Changi Airport to Seletar Airport in due course,” a CAAS spokesman was quoted saying by Singapore’s Straits Times.
The main reason for the renovation was primarily to increase Changi’s efficiency, as having to serve turboprop planes would take up valuable larger airspace and runway slots there.
For this same reason, CAAS requested for Malaysian Airlines’ short-haul carrier Firefly to move to Seletar, due to its turboprop fleet.
Why the need for ILS in Seletar?
Arguably, CAAS chose to use ILS in Seletar as part of its commercial bid to make the airport more appealing to air travellers.
For years, users complained that Seletar was less attractive than and inferior to Changi, with the lack of an ILS among reasons cited for the latter.
In an article by aviation site Aviation Week in February this year, business flight provider Hawker Pacific was among those who urged for Seletar to use ILS.
“Our current [visual flight rules] approach is inevitably presenting a lot of limitations. So, we do have some flights that are diverted to Changi Airport because of low cloud and potential storms. Having ILS would definitely make it easier for the pilots to bring aircraft in here,” its vice-president for Asia, Louis Leong, was quoted saying.
Outgoing Firefly chief executive Ignatius Ong was among those quoted as saying that Seletar would not be “a proper commercial airport” without an ILS.
This desire to transform the general aviation airport into a commercial one may have factored in CAAS’ decision to publish ILS for Seletar.
Conversely, however, the ILS would also restrict future developments in Pasir Gudang as any structures must be under the safety height buffer, which was as low as 54m for anything built just 3km away from Seletar, according to Transport Minister Anthony Loke.
At that limit, even crane machines operating at the port may be at risk of violating the height restriction.
The flight path could also affect development in other areas in Johor, as far north as Ayer Tawar and Kota Tinggi, roughly 20km and 60km away from Pasir Gudang, respectively.
Malay Mail has contacted the CAG for comments on its rationale for employing the ILS to replace the visual approach.
Yesterday, Loke said Seletar could just as easily develop the ILS for use with its Runway 03, which would take the southerly approach within the republic’s own sovereign airspace instead of using the northerly approach at Runway 21 that triggered the dispute with Malaysia.
In response, Singapore’s Ministry of Transport insisted that both approaches are “necessary”, citing wind conditions in the region.
Despite that, Singapore said it is prepared to discuss Malaysia’s technical concerns “in good faith”, despite Loke’s counterpart Khaw Boon Wan previously accusing him of using a technical excuse to “trigger demand” to change the airspace.
Loke declined Malay Mail’s inquiry yesterday for clarification on Firefly’s demand for ILS in Seletar, and his counterpart Khaw’s criticism over his ILS explanation.
