Addendum
Hong Kong’s third runway system on track for commissioning
October 1st 2024
Unless there are last minute hitches, Hong Kong International Airport’s (HKIA) new third runway systems (3RS) will be accepting landing and departing aircraft from the final week of November. Read More »
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A commissioning ceremony, to be attended by the who’s who of the Greater China aviation industry, is scheduled for November 28 and is on track to meet the official opening deadline.
The new HKIA northern runway has been operating for two years and has freed up the airport’s centre runway leveling works and the construction of a variety of taxi ways. Now completed, the 3RS is ready to play its role in bringing to fruition the HKIA’s planned Airport City. Airport Authority Hong Kong forecasts the 3RS will allow the airport to process up to 120 million and 10 million tonnes of cargo a year.
Another vital part of HKIA’s expansion is the redevelopment of Terminal 2 (T2), until now the poor cousin of HKIA’s T1. T2 is being transformed to accommodate 50 million passengers a year linked to 60 gates on an airside satellite concourse. The upgrade will integrate the present HKIA ground transportation system – taxis, buses and the Airport Express train network to passengers processed through T2. HKIA was opened in 1998 on a man-made island north of the much larger Lantau Island and built at an astonishing pace. Its introduction of a dedicated high speed train from Hong Kong and Kowloon to the airport was ground breaking among the major airports worldwide. Now the airport is very much focused on a much larger target than the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - the 87.5 million increasingly affluent potential travellers resident in China’s Greater Bay Area. The region’s nine Mainland cities are only 90 minutes - at the most - by coach and/or ferry from HKIA’s future Airport City. Thirty down town check-in centres are being built to attract GBA air passengers to transit through HKIA or spend a day or more at HKIA. Airport City and return to the Mainland without venturing from airside in Hong Kong.
