Hong Kong Airport opens ‘skybridge’ in preparation for revival

Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) opened a bridge connecting a terminal and satellite concourse, part of a wider HK$9 billion ($1.15 billion) upgrade even as a full recovery in air traffic remains far off.

“What the airport engineers and practitioners want to make sure is we complete the facilities in advance of the demand coming up,” said Ricky Leung, HKIA’s executive director of engineering and technology.

Hong Kong’s prized status as a major aviation hub took a beating through the pandemic, with passenger numbers slumping as the government imposed rules such as mandatory hotel quarantine for as long as 21 days. In the depths of the crisis, the city’s dominant airline Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. was flying only a few hundred passengers a day compared with about 100,000 pre-Covid.

A recovery is slowly underway after quarantine was dropped and other rules eased in recent months. HKIA said it is handling about 20,000 passengers a day, while Cathay carried close to 266,000 passengers in September, more than double the number a year ago, but still 89% below the same month in 2019.

Asked when the airport could return to normal, Leung said: “I cannot really tell you the timeline yet because I think nobody can at the moment.”

HKIA is also going through a much bigger HK$144 billion upgrade that includes adding a third runway.

Parts of the airport are still being used for virus testing or to split China-bound passengers from others, which is holding back a return to full capacity. Many stores remain shuttered and concourses aren’t anywhere near the lively levels of a few years ago. Surveying the scene, it would seem airport workers outnumber passengers.

Some retailers are finally coming back, including Louis Vuitton and Hermes, which opened their airport stores. That and the opening of the so-called skybridge, which will eventually feature a viewing platform for planespotters, coincided with the approach of tropical storm Nalgae. The city’s observatory said it will consider raising the No. 8 storm signal.

—Bloomberg