Hong Kong should fully regain status as international aviation hub by end of year, global airline body says
- International Air Transport Association director general Willie Walsh says he went from being pessimistic to optimistic over Hong Kong’s ability to recover its aviation hub status after seeing how fast Cathay rebuilt itself
- ‘Hong Kong was probably the most affected major hub airport, and Cathay the most affected major hub airline … So it’s been a tough job for Hong Kong, much tougher than I think in other parts of the world,’ he says
The head of a global airline association remains upbeat about Hong Kong fully regaining its status as an international aviation hub by the end of this year, even though the city’s flag carrier had pushed back its target of restoring capacity to pre-pandemic levels to early 2025.
“I was quite pessimistic [before]. And that pessimism was driven by what we’d seen happening to Hong Kong, which we didn’t see in most of the parts of the world,” he said, referring to the city shutting itself off from international travellers and the carrier halting most of its operations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Hong Kong was probably the most affected major hub airport, and Cathay the most affected major hub airline … So it’s been a tough job for Hong Kong, much tougher than I think in other parts of the world.
“And restarting their operations from zero is much more complex than other airlines have faced.”
In July last year, IATA revised its own projection for Hong Kong’s aviation recovery and forecast the city would reach pre-pandemic passenger levels by the end of 2024, three years earlier than previously predicted.