Coronavirus: Carrie Lam defends Hong Kong’s status as top aviation hub amid travel curbs after airline industry chief says city fell ‘off the map’

Hong Kong’s leader has said there is “no doubt” the city is an important aviation hub a day after the head of a global airline association commented it had fallen “off the map” due to its strict Covid-19 travel restrictions.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Thursday that the city would continue to review and adjust its pandemic policies, including its flight suspension mechanism, under which six airlines saw route bans in the past week after carrying travellers who tested positive for the virus on arrival in Hong Kong.

Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), called Hong Kong an outlier during a media briefing on Wednesday. He said the city’s travel curbs had made it “extremely difficult, if not impossible” for airlines to operate.

“Hong Kong as an international hub airport has slipped. It is effectively off the map now and I think it is going be difficult for Hong Kong to recover,” he said.

While much of the world has opened up and resumed quarantine-free international travel, Hong Kong has retained some of the strictest travel rules adhering to its “dynamic zero-Covid” approach in line with mainland China.