Hong Kong Airlines seeks Belt and Road partners amid plans for expansion

Vice-chairman of airlines tells the Post they hopes to seek new opportunities along trade route

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Hong Kong Airlines hopes to expand its reach along the trade route. Photo: Handout

Published: 8:01am, 3 Nov 2017Updated: 2:11pm, 17 Jan 2019

Hong Kong Airlines is eyeing new partners to help it expand and boost business access to the Beijing-led Belt and Road trade route, a top official revealed.

The lack of direct flights to countries along the route presented a number of “opportunities” for the airline to grow in scale, the airline’s vice-chairman Tang King-shing said in an exclusive interview.

“We are active in considering new opportunities to extend our network by doing it through our own fleet expansion, code-sharing or interlining arrangements, which put us in quite a good position in pursuing the opportunities that can be created by the Belt and Road Initiative,” he said.

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Launched in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Belt and Road Initiative is a strategy to open up commerce and trade along more than 65 countries through land and sea corridors.

For Hong Kong Airlines, the Maldives will be one of the first, and most exotic destinations, to join the company’s growing list of destinations along the route.

The airline said it was pushing to start direct flights to India, Kazakhstan and parts of Indonesia as the company expands internationally. It already sells tickets to these countries for different airlines, a practise known in the industry as “code-sharing”.

Hong Kong Airlines vice-chairman Tang King-shing. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

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