HONG KONG. Hong Kong International Airport handled 4.2 million passengers in March, a rise of +1.8% on March 2010, Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) has reported.
Flight movements in March rose by +15.5% year-on-year to a monthly high of 28,140. A new single-day record of 971 flight movements was set on 31 March, breaking the previous record made on 20 April 2008.
The growth in passenger traffic was mainly driven by Hong Kong resident travel, which registered an increase of +6% over the same period last year. Passenger traffic to/from Southeast Asia and the Chinese Mainland also performed particularly well.
AAHK Chief Executive Stanley Hui Hon-chung said the strong increase in flight movements was attributable to airlines increasing flights on the back of robust economy of the region. The moderate growth in passenger traffic reflected partly the high growth rate in March last year and the immediate aftermath of the recent earthquake and nuclear crisis in Japan, which led airlines to reduce flights to Japan.
“Airlines around the world will continue to reduce flights to Japan until the nuclear threat is cleared,” he said. “In the case of Hong Kong-based airlines, we have seen capacity being redeployed from Japan to other destinations in the region, which is why we continue to see reasonable increase in flight movements at HKIA. The situation with Japan may persist for a while, but we remain cautiously optimistic that the aviation market in general will continue to grow.”
In the first quarter of 2011 passenger traffic registered a +4.6% increase, reaching 12.5 million, while flight movements jumped +14.0% to 79,845.
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