Hong Kong ranked fourth in a university study on air transit connectivity at 16 aviation hubs across the Asia-Pacific in 2023.
Researchers from the National Taiwan Ocean University’s transport science department also said Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou experienced declines in connectivity following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The paper was published in the Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics in early December, assessing the competitive positions of 16 major hub airports in the region before and after the pandemic, using September 2019 and the same month in 2023 as the reference periods.
The study used data from the Innovata worldwide flight schedules database.
In terms of “quantity of viable connections”, or QVC, derived from the database, a metric used to measure the scale of an airport’s transfer opportunities, the researchers found South Korea’s Incheon International Airport ranked first in 2023.
This was followed by Japan’s Narita International Airport, Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan and Hong Kong International Airport.
A viable connection is defined as a pair of arriving and departing flights that allow sufficient time for passengers to complete the transfer process at an airport.
