Mile-high criminals targeting passengers on flights into Hong Kong on the rise

A new front in the battle to stem Hong Kong's rising crime rate has opened up which brings a whole new meaning to theft on the fly.

New figures obtained by the Sunday Morning Post reveal a rising tide of thefts on-board passenger jets flying into Hong Kong International Airport.

Since the beginning of this year, there have been 45 in-flight robberies - almost as many as the 48 in the whole of 2014. Half of these have taken place in the past three months, suggesting a fresh surge of in-flight pilfering as robbers take advantage of unsuspecting air travellers.

The criminal haul so far in 2015 - which has a total cash value of HK$3 million - includes cash, jewellery and smartphones. The figure tops last year's figure of HK$2.61 million reported stolen.

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Detectives are also not ruling out the possibility that organised criminal gangs are behind the mile-high crime wave.

"In one or two cases we have made arrests, we do not see a link developing into syndicates who commit overhead compartment thefts, but we cannot rule out this possibility of organised crime," an airport police intelligence source said.