Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) wants the airline–airport networking community to come to the 30th edition of World Routes, taking place on 24-26 September 2025, and see today’s Hong Kong for themselves.
“I think there’s a lot of misconception out there with people thinking Hong Kong is not the same as before,” said Vivian Cheung, Acting CEO, Airport Authority Hong Kong. “We want to let people know that’s not true. Hong Kong is still a very vibrant, very warm, and very diverse place.”
The message is that while part of China, and while the big state has had influence over how Hong Kong runs, this prosperous Special Administrative Region of China retains its separate identity, and maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of one country, two systems.
From the airport’s point of view, it has a strong development story. HKIA has new assets and an ambitious strategy to develop new ones, that mean now is the time to refocus on Hong Kong again.
The main new asset is HKIA’s third runway, which opened at the end of November. “In the past 10 years many airlines wanted to gain access to Hong Kong, but they couldn’t. We didn’t have the slots in,” said Cheung.
Now it does, including plenty at peak times, and “that’s why we need to let people know to get in the game quickly and move to their advantage,” she noted.
The new three-runway system will enable the airport to handle 120 million passenger trips and 10 million tonnes of cargo annually, said Michael Wong, Deputy Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, in October.
The mammoth Airport City at HKIA is also taking shape rapidly. Launched in 2019, this complex aims to develop a new “world-leading landmark, the largest in the region, that integrates commercial activities, popular culture, art trading, entertainment and leisure under an expanded development blueprint spearheaded by Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK), with the aim of driving further economic development of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area,” according to the AAHK.
The developments at HKIA come thick and fast as the expanded Terminal 2 will open later in 2025 – doubling its capacity to 50 million passengers per annum. “There’s a lot of things to see next year,” Cheung said.
