Encouraging air cargo figures at Hong Kong Airport
Dave BondHong Kong International Airport experienced a 1.3% rise in cargo tonnage at 324,000 tonnes during the month of October, which represents the first monthly increase since August 2008. But the good news was somewhat tempered by a decrease of air traffic movements of 7.8% to 23,945 movements as well as passenger numbers of 3.7% with 3.9 million over October last year.
The airport catered to some 38.2 million passengers during the period between from January to October, saw 231,800 aircraft movements and moved 2.7 million tons of cargo.
These figures represent annual slumps of 6.3 percent, 7.9 percent and 13.4 percent, respectively.
On a rolling 12-month basis Hong Kong Airport experienced 46 million passengers, 281,345 aircraft movements and 3.2 million tonnes of cargo volume.
According to Hong Kong Airport Authority chief executive officer Stanley Hui Hon-chung, the recent traffic data contribute to a continued progress towards stabilization, in particular to air cargo activity, which echoed the overall economic environment.
Mr Hui Hon-chung said the cargo figures are very encouraging seeing that there has been an end of the downward trend during the month of October. But he cautioned that this was only a slight improvement over October 2008 which itself had experienced a drop in comparison to October 2007. Nevertheless, he said, it’s still good news in a tough economic climate.
He hopes for a continuum of the strong growth momentum through the pre-Christmas period giving extra boost to the recovery of the cargo industry.
During this period, transshipment traffic also slumped by 8% because of the cargo diversion of Mainland-Taiwan to direct flights across the Taiwan Strait.
Export volume out of the facility saw a year-on-year 0.1% jump, which ended months of negative growth. As for import volume, the figures were extremely encouraging as it increased by13% in October.
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