While Hong Kong's political action in recent days has focused on unruly students trying to disrupt the march of progress as they clamber over an obsolete clock tower, the Hong Kong Airport Authority released a report entitled "HKIA 2025."

Copies of this report are not apparently yet available to the poor taxpaying punter who owns the airport, but it sets out the authority's plans for the next couple of decades.

According to reports in this newspaper, the plan envisages that the number of passengers will double over the report's time frame, with an annual throughput of 80 million people by 2025, while we are also told that a third runway is going to be built.

Not only would it be rather nice if we could actually see the report, especially after the "elites" seemed to have avoided consulting us during the plan's preparation, but it would also be useful if the administration were to actually tell us what stage they have reached in the privatization of the authority.

It was on January 31, 2005, that the administration last briefed the Legislative Council panel on economic services about its strong intentions to list the Airport Authority.

It cited the fact "that stakeholders were generally supportive after the consultation," carried out a year earlier, while the administration even went so far as to state that "when the authority is privatized through an IPO, the prospectus will disclose details of the regulatory environment within which the body operates."

In the intervening two years we have heard nothing about the privatization of the authority, despite the fact that the administration was so keen on it at that time. Indeed, it is not even clear if the airport's masterplan for the next two decades has taken the privatization into account.

If the plan is prepared on the presumption that the authority's ownership structure remains as is, then this would surely indicate that the enthusiasm for the privatization that the administration showed in January 2005, with all its well-framed arguments supporting the advantages that it would offer, has cooled.

If the reality is that there is now no intention of selling the authority via a public listing, we should be told so; and, moreover, we should be told why the carefully drafted 47-page report that was presented to the Legislative Council panel on economic services that day in January 2005 has now turned out to be full of arguments that someone, somewhere, has decided are no longer relevant.

Of course, a quick look at the accounts of the Airport Authority gives a fairly good insight into the various reasons that may be drowning the political will to list the airport's operations.

First off, the authority is not making any money from the airlines that use its world-class facilities.

Instead, it is relying on us consumers to spend money at its expanding retail empire for its profitability.

Indeed, retail revenue in the year to March 2006, according to the proud commentaries in the accounts, increased by almost 12 percent to HK$1.87 billion.

This rent roll now makes the authority one of the largest retail landlords in Hong Kong.

However, on the other hand, passenger traffic and revenue from the aviation side of the business increased by a more modest 10 percent and, despite the fact that the return on equity was a miserable 4.9 percent, the authority continued to give rebates to the airlines, which trebled in the 2005-06 financial year over the earlier 12-month period.

For the last financial year the total profit attributable to the authority was HK$1.61 billion - approximately HK$250 million less than the rent roll that it received from operating the shops.

In other words, the airlines using the airport are still being subsidized, as the aviation business is losing money.

Given the fact that it would appear the core aviation services at the airport are losing money, it is irrational for the authority to advocate building a third runway and doubling its passenger throughput.

It is a pretty basic law of economics that if a product is underpriced then there will be excess demand affected by the underpricing.

Underpricing is apparent at our airport. Yet, rather than increase prices to an economic level, we are now proposing to double the amount of the product that we offer.

Two years ago, the administration envisaged that revenue from non-aviation activities would be separated from the aviation business and that both should stand separately.

Such a "dual till" regime would increase the fees that the airlines would pay, which in turn would result in increased fares, curbing demand and reducing their profits.

I wonder what has changed in the interim.

Maybe it is time to bring on the students again.