Singapore’s Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin shared an infographic from the Straits Times about the airspace dipute between Malaysia and Singapore, specifically with points of an unknown number of nameless aviation experts countering the video put out by Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke on the issue just a couple of day ago.
The 1.5 minute video shared by Mr Loke explained the reasons why Malaysia is opposing the Seletar Airport Instrument Landing System (ILS) flight path that goes over Pasir Gudang in Johor. In gist, height restrictions that will be imposed in the flight path area covering Pasir Gudang and reaching as far as Ayer Tawar and Kota Tinggi limiting structures to 54m within 3km of Selatar Airport and 145m within 6km of the airport.
In response, Straits Times quoted from their panel of nameless aviation experts – as pictured in the infographic shared by Mr Tan – that Malaysia got the numbers wrong. According to the nameless experts, the height restrictions are 93.8m and 193.1m within 3km and 6km respectively from Selatar Airport, which is higher than what Malaysian claimed it would be. This means that Malaysia can still build tall buildings in the flight path area, should they want to.
The same nameless experts also refuted Mr Loke’s claim that there weren’t height restrictions before ILS, stating that International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) already had standards in place to ensure that airports mitigate the impact of tall structures. They also counter the claim that ILS would subject the Malaysian Pasir Gudang Port to higher risks and multiple restrictions, saying that the ILS will have no impact on the port at all based on Singapore’s height limit.
Singaporean netizens are fired up over the revelation from the state media based on their nameless experts, with no shortage of scathing remarks from Singapore being more capable of managing the airspace to slamming Mr Loke for his lack of knowledge about ILS and implying that Malaysia should settle its internal problems first before picking a fight with their neighbours.
