HK airport grounds flight until midnight, full operations to resume Thursday morning

Hong Kong International Airport will maintain a full suspension of flight operations until midnight due to safety concerns arising from Super Typhoon Ragasa, with authorities announcing that normal schedules will gradually resume from 6am Thursday.

The Airport Authority expects the airport to be exceptionally busy tomorrow, handling over 1,000 flights—a return to normal daily volume. Three runways will be fully operational to manage the anticipated surge.

Recovery efforts and passenger impact

Between 6pm Tuesday and this afternoon, more than 1,000 flights were canceled, affecting approximately 140,000 passengers, according to Chris Au Young, the Airport Authority’s general manager of terminal and passenger experience. He estimated it would take about two days for operations to fully normalize.

“We are closely coordinating with the MTR and hope to add an extra Airport Express train before the first scheduled service tomorrow morning,” he said.

The authority is also working with taxi and bus operators to ensure transport services resume when roads are safe, with the electronic taxi dispatch system at the airport remaining in operation.

Safety takes precedence over speed

When asked why flights could not resume earlier, Au Young emphasized that safety remained the top priority.

He said even after the typhoon signal is lowered, strong winds and crosswinds can persist, creating hazardous conditions for takeoff and landing. The Authority has been in close communication with the Civil Aviation Department and the Hong Kong Observatory to monitor conditions.

Cathay Pacific confirmed it expects to gradually restore flights from 6am Thursday. The airline is arranging for aircraft temporarily stationed at other airports to return to Hong Kong and warned that due to the high number of cancellations, it may take several days to clear the backlog of affected passengers.

(Marco Lam)