8-10-2023 (HONG KONG) Hong Kong International Airport has ascended to the fourth spot in the list of Asia-Pacific’s busiest airports for international passengers during the first eight months of this year. This is a remarkable rise from its 30th position last year, attributed to the easing of the city’s stringent Covid-19 travel restrictions.
However, industry experts have cautioned that the airport still faces challenges such as staffing shortages and supply chain disruptions that impede its full recovery and return to the coveted number one position it consistently held before the pandemic. In 2019, the airport handled a substantial 71.5 million passengers.
The rankings for January to August indicate that Singapore’s Changi Airport took the top position, serving nearly 38 million passengers. This represents an 84 percent recovery rate compared to the 45 million passengers it accommodated during the same period in 2019, according to data from Singaporean consulting firm Sobie Aviation.
Seoul’s Incheon Airport secured the second place with 35 million passengers, reflecting a 73 percent recovery rate, while Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport landed in third place with 25.5 million passengers, achieving a 72 percent recovery rate.
Hong Kong International Airport, despite its significant improvement, handled 24.3 million passengers during the period, which is just under half of its pre-pandemic numbers. Taiwan Taoyuan Airport rounded out the top five with 21.8 million passengers, boasting a recovery rate of 67 percent.
Hong Kong lagged behind its Asian-Pacific counterparts in terms of aviation recovery due to the city’s prolonged pandemic restrictions on international arrivals, even as other destinations began reopening to visitors. The city only began easing its restrictions in December of the previous year, and it allowed quarantine-free travel with mainland China in February.
The Airport Authority, responsible for the airport’s operation, had initially projected that passenger traffic would return to 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year, with a full recovery anticipated by next year’s close. As of August, Hong Kong had achieved 67 percent of its pre-pandemic passenger levels.
In a significant development, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) revised its outlook for Hong Kong’s aviation recovery, now forecasting that the airport will reach pre-pandemic passenger levels by the end of the following year. This new timeline is three years earlier than what the global airline body had previously anticipated.
Subhas Menon, the director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, revealed that the region’s airlines carried 171 million international passengers during the first eight months of the year, just over two-thirds of the number for the same period in 2019. He emphasized that competition in the aviation industry was intensifying globally, and Asian airlines remained focused on enhancing productivity.
Aviation analyst Brendan Sobie expressed encouragement over the return of the same top five airports to the rankings in August as North Asian airports recovered traffic levels. In August, Seoul’s Incheon even overtook Singapore’s Changi Airport for the first time this year, while Hong Kong’s airport consistently held the third-busiest position from May to August.
Sobie acknowledged that closing the gap with Singapore would take time, as Hong Kong’s 3.99 million passengers in August were more than a million short of Changi’s 5.15 million.
While predicting next year remains challenging, he noted that there is a possibility for Hong Kong to reclaim the number one position. However, Sobie also cautioned that the final leg of the journey to reach pre-pandemic levels would be the most arduous, considering that Singapore and Bangkok had opened up earlier and observed traffic plateau in recent months.
He further pointed out that staffing shortages at airports and airlines, supply chain issues, and fleet constraints posed formidable hurdles to returning to pre-pandemic levels. Xie Xingquan, IATA’s regional vice-president for North Asia, echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that supply-side challenges would hinder airlines’ ability to restore capacity in response to strong travel demand. These challenges included a global shortage of spare parts for aircraft, delays in the delivery of new planes, backlogs in aircraft maintenance and servicing, and a scarcity of skilled workers, including pilots and flight attendants.
Andrew Yuen Chi-lok, a senior lecturer at Chinese University’s Aviation Policy and Research Centre, identified the ongoing labor shortage as a significant concern for Hong Kong’s aviation sector. He anticipated gradual improvements, buoyed by the government’s plan to import 6,300 aviation employees, part of a wider initiative to bring in 20,000 foreign workers. Presently, there are approximately 53,000 workers at Hong Kong’s airport, a third fewer than the 78,000 employed before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
