Residents drive passenger traffic growth in HKIA

Hong Kong residents are traveling more, registering a 16% YoY growth.

In a news release, the Hong Kong International Airport announced that both passenger numbers and aircraft movements at Hong Kong International Airport registered significant year-on-year growth in April 2012, increasing by 7.8% and 4.8% respectively compared to the same month last year.

In April this year, HKIA handled 4.9 million passengers and 29,025 aircraft movements, including peak daily traffic exceeding 1,000 flights over the Easter holiday period. Cargo throughput, however, remained slow and was slightly down by 0.8% to 327,000 tonnes for the month.

Hong Kong residents were the main drivers behind the growth in passenger traffic with a 16% growth over April 2011 levels. Routes to and from Japan, South East Asia and the Chinese Mainland performed particularly well.

While exports grew by 2% in April, the decline in cargo volume was primarily due to a 5% year-on-year drop in imports together with a 3% decrease in transshipments. Cargo activity with South East Asia outperformed other key regions.

Commenting on the traffic performance, Stanley Hui Hon-chung, Chief Executive Officer of Airport Authority Hong Kong, said, "While we are pleased to see the continued growth in passenger volume and aircraft movements, air traffic performance in the coming months may be under pressure given the uncertain economic outlook. Despite the short-term uncertainty, we remain optimistic of the long-term growth and development of the airport."

In the first four months of the year, passenger traffic saw an annual increase of 8% to over 18.4 million people. Air traffic movements grew by 6.2% to 114,205 compared with same period last year. A total of 1.3 million tonnes of cargo was handled during the period, down 1.3% from the same period last year.

On a rolling 12-month basis, HKIA has served 55.3 million passengers and handled 340,440 aircraft movements, both increasing year on year by 6.6%. Cargo tonnage dropped 5.4% to 3.9 million tonnes over the same period.