Hong Kong’s air passenger traffic soars to pre-pandemic levels over Christmas

Hong Kong’s daily air passenger traffic has reached more than 180,000 on average during the Christmas period and returned to pre-pandemic levels, the transport minister has said as she pledged to increase flight frequency.

Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan also said on Thursday that during the Christmas holiday, the number of flight movements on a single day peaked at about 1,150, which was close to the average figure before the pandemic.

“During the Christmas period in 2024, our average passenger traffic was more than 180,000 per day. On December 21, the single-day peak was 190,000. It has returned to pre-pandemic levels,” Chan told a radio programme.

“The Airport Authority will actively increase the number of flights. The Transport and Logistics Bureau will also take a proactive and open attitude to do our best to remove the restrictions in terms of on our air services agreements, so that we can add new locations and frequencies of flights.”

The Airport Authority earlier expected the daily passenger traffic would reach a pre-pandemic peak of around 200,000 people during Christmas.

In December 2023, the authority said that passenger traffic had recovered to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. Over 160,000 passengers were handled daily by the airport on both December 22 and 23. The flight movements that month had peaked at 1,034 in a single day.