PHUKET: The cost of expanding Phuket International Airport is likely to blow out to 5.7 billion baht or more for the probable winning contractor, Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction Public Company.

Phuketwan cannot guarantee that Sino-Thai has the contract, but insiders in the airline industry certainly were putting that name at the top of their lists today.

Five engineering and construction firms were said to be in the mix for Thursday's critical decision by Airports of Thailand, after years of dithering.

The result and details of the latest plan for Phuket International Airport are going to be announced at a media conference at Royal Phuket City Hotel in - believe it or not - Phuket City on Friday.

It's about time. The plan to extend Phuket airport was revealed exclusively to Phuketwan back in 2008, when the price tag was five billion or less. Since then, not a sod has been turned in construction on Phuket.

There has been a lot of talking, and even a new international airport design, but all that jaw-jaw instead of dig-dig has led to continuing doubts about the capacity of the new airport.

Phuketwan has pointed out that even with quite modest gains in passenger traffic in the next few years, the new international airport is likely to be - as Phuket's Bill Barnett puts it - dead on arrival.

The big unresolved issue, we understand, is partly the problem created by taking four years to go from whoa to whoa, without passing go.

The prices of construction material and labor have risen, so the original estimate of five billion baht for the project has blown out to 5.7 billion.

Phuketwan understands that the reticence of construction firms and the continuing discussions about an agreed cost are because of the long delay and the parsimony of AoT.

The old Phuket International Airport, created to hold 6.5 million pasengers, has done extremely well with the help of an overworked staff tohandle more than eight million arrivals and departures last year and to head towards more than nine million this year.

As good as the new wave design Phuket terminal looks, it will be overcrowded before you know it at the current rate of increase in Phuket's popularity.

And there is no plan that we've heard about for what happens when nine million Phuket passengers this year grows to more than 10 million Phuket passengers in 2013, more than 11 million in 2014 and twelve million - the new Phuket airport's capacity - as the new international terminal opens in 2015 or more likely 2016.

How will the construction process work without adding hugely to flight delays coming and going that people complain about?

(A personal declaration here. Flying out of Phuket for Melbourne and returning earlier this month was an absolute dream at Phuket, where there were no delays, but hell in Melbourne both arriving and departing, with one hour plus queues at Customs.)

There was once an adapted plan to demolish staff buildings in the southernmost corner of the Phuket airport space. That probably needs to be done soon as a matter of urgency.

We were told that the extra space would help to increase the airport's capacity to 15 million, but we're not sure how.

Perhaps we will find out at the official announcement on Friday.