Macau’s airport was born during a wave of building new or replacement airports in southern China’s Pearl River Delta region largely caused by China’s then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping touring southern China in 1992 andencouraging economic development.

Just about every wealthy city drew up plans for an airport. Of the major fi ve within about 40 miles or less of each other, a heady mixture of politics and economics surrounded theircreation:

Shenzhen, immediately north of Hong Kong, had started in a small way in 1991 but became international in 1993, and was already looking at becoming a reliever airport for a very crowded Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It is now the Chinese mainland’s fourth busiest airport after Beijing, Shanghai andGuangzhou.

Guangzhou, southern China’s major centre, needed a long time to get moving, fi nally opening a“greenfield” replacementNew White Cloud Airport in2004 with massive developmentpotential for up to six runways.

Hong Kong replaced Kai Tak with a giant new airport at Chek Lap Kok, alongside Lantau Island in the New Territories, in July 1998 after a year’s delay. The new airport was started under British rule in Hong Kong and was supposed to be opened before Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, but this proved impossible to achieve. It has already opened a second terminal and is talking about adding a third runway and third terminal.

Just north of Macau, in May 1995 Zhuhai opened a large new airport that ever since has been widely viewed as a white elephant and an economic millstone around the provincial authorities’ collective neck. A joint venture between Zhuhai and Hong Kong’s Airport Authority to manage Zhuhai has seen the airport upgraded and services increasing, and it is hoping to turn the corner fi nancially in a few years.

In November 1995, Macau opened its brand new airport in what was widely seen as a sop to the territory from its Portuguese rulers before the then colony was handed back to China in December 1999. A local airline, Air Macau, had been set up the previous year – it is now owned by a grouping of major Chinese carrier Air China (with 51 percent of the airline), TAPAir Portugal (20 percent), former gam-bling monopoly STDM with 14 percent,Taiwan’s EVA Airways (5 percent), theMacau government (5 percent) andMacau investors.

No one, but no one, expected Macau’s airport to be anything but a tiny, sleepy aviation backwater. But with the growth of southern China’s industrial base in line with China as a whole becoming the workshop for the world, it was realised that Macau could (a) have a niche market for airlines not serving Hong Kong and (b) complement Hong Kong with extra capacity. Macau could and did trade traffi c rights with some abandon, far more easily and rapidly than, say, Guangzhou.

The results have been startling. Macau’s offi cial statistics show cargo rising from 76,000 tonnes in 2001 to just over 227,000 tonnes in 2005. The airport has benefi ted hugely from the political impasse between China’s mainland and Taiwan, whereby there are no direct air services between the two (except for special passenger charters on specifi c holidays). This so-called Cross Straits trade shunts mainland-Taiwan cargo via Hong Kong and Macau.

Apart from the Cross Straits trade, Macau received a huge boost from the United States West Coast ports’ strike in 2004. But this fl attened out in 2005. That year, Air Macau moved into leasing large freighters and became the dominant air cargo operator in Macau.