Some air passengers remain stranded at Hong Kong airport after Typhoon Noul

Some air passengers remained stranded at Hong Kong International Airport on Monday following Typhoon Noul’s departure from the city, while authorities said they expected normal operations to resume on the same day.

According to the airport website, as of 12.45pm, 12 departing flights initially scheduled for Sunday had been rescheduled for Monday, including three that were due to depart between 5pm and 11.15pm.

The website also showed that eight departure and eight arrival flights scheduled for Monday had been cancelled. They included seven departure flights initially slated for take-off between midnight and 1.05am.

On Monday morning, the South China Morning Post observed that while passengers formed orderly queues at check-in counters, dozens of stranded travellers who had spent the night on benches were still waiting for airlines to clear backlogs from delayed flights.

Typhoon Noul triggered the city’s first No 8 and No 9 storm signals of the year over the weekend and led to the cancellation of about 400 flights. Although all typhoon warnings were cancelled on Sunday evening, some travellers said their flights had been rescheduled for Monday evening.

Among them was Xing Tai from Beijing, who said her Saturday flight home had been cancelled, leaving her stranded at the airport for a full day.