The Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA)'s traffic figures increased across the board in the first quarter of this year, with passengers, cargo throughput and aircraft movements growing by 6.7 percent, 34 percent and 1.2 percent respectively, the Airport Authority Hong Kong announced Sunday.
This was the first time since the financial tsunami in 2008 that all three traffic figures recorded positive growth in the same quarter.
In the first quarter, the HKIA handled 12 million passengers, 905,000 tons of cargo and 70,100 aircraft movements, representing yearly increases of 6.7 percent, 34 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.
"We are encouraged by the strong figures in the first quarter and are optimistic that air traffic will soon return to pre-crisis levels if the existing trends continue," said Stanley Hui Hon- chung, Chief Executive Officer of Airport Authority Hong Kong.
In March, passenger traffic at the Hong Kong International Airport grew 6.5 percent to 4.2 million and cargo throughput surged 29.5 percent to 347,000 tons year on year, reflecting continued recovery in the aviation sector. Air traffic movements also increased by 2.5 percent over last March to 24,370.
On the cargo side, imports, exports and transhipments saw year- on-year growth of 31 percent, 39 percent and 10 percent respectively.
"While all three air traffic categories continued to show gains in March, cargo throughput, which is 29.5 percent higher than the same period in 2009 and 4 percent higher than 2008, performed particularly well as a result of continuing recovery in the global economy as well as trade," Hui added.
Visitor and Hong Kong resident numbers for March also showed year-on-year increases of 11.1 percent and 9.4 percent respectively, with traffic on routes to and from South East Asia, Chinese mainland and Japan performing particularly well.
To meet the growing demand for air services, handling capacity of HKIA's two runways has been raised from 58 to 59 movements per hour as planned for the summer operating season, effective from the end of March.
According to the plan announced by the Civil Aviation Department, Hui noted that the hourly movement capacity of the two- runway system at HKIA will be further increased in phases over the coming years, reaching 68 movements per hour by 2015.
