Hong Kong airport chief confident travellers will return, but compulsory Covid-19 tests still a turn-off for many

With pandemic curbs eased, daily number of travellers expected to rise by 10,000 by Lunar New Year

Official disagrees with global group’s dim view that city won’t regain air hub status before 2028

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Passengers arrive at Hong Kong’s airport amid the biggest easing of curbs since the pandemic emerged nearly three years ago. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

Published: 8:00am, 19 Dec 2022

Hong Kong’s lifting of Covid-19 restrictions for travellers will speed up recovery, but the number of air passengers is unlikely to hit 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels until 2024, a senior airport official has said.

Vivian Cheung Kar-fay, chief operating officer of the Airport Authority Hong Kong, said she expected the number of passengers passing through daily to rise from around 50,000 currently to about 60,000 by Lunar New Year next month.

“We are confident the flow will come back at least to the 2019 level and even further,” Cheung added.

Before Covid-19 struck in early 2020, about 200,000 people passed through the airport every day, making it Asia’s busiest air hub.

In an interview with the Post, Cheung was optimistic about the prospects for recovery and disagreed with International Air Transport Association chief Willie Walsh, who said last week the global industry group did not expect Hong Kong to regain its hub status or reach its 2019 passenger levels before 2028.

Chief of operations at the Airport Authority, Vivian Cheung. Photo: Handout

“Of course I don’t agree with that,” Cheung said. “I agree that traffic will not come back to 2019 levels by 2024. But he said it will only come back by 2028, that is too far away. We are still optimistic that traffic will come back and Hong Kong will be strong.”