I never made anyone cry: Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying issues fresh rebuttal in Hong Kong airport bag saga
Airport Authority reveals that of 517 ‘courtesy deliveries’ last year, only 43 involved items of hand luggage
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying brushed off accusations that he had reduced an airline worker to tears during a phone conversation to help pass left luggage to his daughter in a restricted area of Hong Kong International Airport.
Leung made his latest rebuttal on Tuesday ahead of the weekly meeting of the Executive Council, saying the Airport Authority had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
“Even the special incident report of Cathay Pacific revealed by the media also did not mention I had made anyone cry,” he said. “If you study the related documents, you will know I did not exercise any privilege or pressure anyone.”
Two weeks ago a former local deputy to the National People’s Congress, David Chu Yu-lin, claimed a Cathay Pacific worker who spoke on the phone to Leung had been left in tears.
Leung Chung-yan, the younger daughter of Hong Kong’s top official, left her hand luggage in a non-restricted area on March 28. An airport employee then delivered it to her in a closed-off area before she took a Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco.
Chu told the Post: “No mention in the reports does not mean it never happened. If Leung wanted to prove that he never pressured anyone, why not ask the person involved to make a personal statement?”
“He talked to the airline staff member on the phone and asked for information – that is exerting pressure.”
The episode led to accusations that Leung had abused his power and sparked fears that air safety regulations had been breached, jeopardising flight safety. This was quickly denied last week by the Airport Authority, which also said that 517 such “courtesy deliveries” had been made over the past year.
But at a security panel in the Legislative Council on Tuesday, the authority revealed that only 40 of the 517 items involved hand luggage – the rest were mainly electronic devices and wallets.
“Over the past year, we delivered 23 hand luggages to the owners in the restricted area on the same day we received the requested,” said Ng Chi-kee, executive director of the Airport Authority.
“The remaining 17 luggages were handed in to the customers when they were back in the territory after the journey.”
