The two runways at Hong Kong International Airport will both remain open overnight on Monday and Tuesday to handle 2,000 rescheduled flights after Typhoon Mangkhut, the most intense storm to hit the city on record, wreaked havoc on Sunday. "About 900 flights will be rescheduled today and a total of 2,000 within 48 hours,” Jack So Chak-kwong, chairman of the Airport Authority, said Monday morning. Hong Kong Airlines would operate 95 flights on Monday, among which 26 were originally scheduled for Sunday and four for Saturday. All of budget carrier Hong Kong Express’ flights scheduled for Monday resumed fully, plus four deferred from the weekend. “Usually the two runways take turns to be closed for maintenance at night,” an Airport Authority spokesman said. “But we will have both of them open for two nights to clear as much of the backlog as possible.” So said: “After today [Monday], everything should return to normal.”<br/>
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Cathay Pacific and some other airlines resumed services to Hong Kong, a city that was battered over the weekend by a powerful typhoon, forcing the cancellation of almost 900 flights. The city’s flag carrier reported on its website “a gradual return to scheduled flight operations” starting Monday morning. The Hong Kong International Airport said Sunday that passengers should proceed to the terminals only when their seats and flight time have been confirmed. “Service resumption will likely be very slow, and still subject to weather conditions, with continued delays and some cancellations,” Cathay cautioned passengers. The carrier scrapped more than 400 flights over the weekend, while Cathay Dragon and Hong Kong Airlines grounded their fleets. Hong Kong is limping back to normalcy as the Hong Kong Observatory lowered its rating to a Strong Wind Signal No. 3 on Typhoon Mangkhut. The storm left a trail of destruction in the Philippines before heading toward the Pearl River delta in southeastern China, where Hong Kong is located. Some flights at the airport in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, have also resumed Monday, according to the airport’s website.<br/>
Still bruised from a typhoon that grounded hundreds of flights, Hong Kong’s status as Asia’s top aviation hub faces a new threat: Chinese bullet trains. The world’s longest high-speed rail network will extend to downtown Hong Kong on Sept. 23, providing a direct connection to 44 mainland destinations. With the addition of services from Guangzhou and Shenzhen — the major cities closest to Hong Kong — what’s now a daylong train trip to Beijing would be cut to nine hours. China’s high-speed network stretches for 25,000 kilometers and is a strong competitor for airlines in a market where congested airspace and limited landing slots mean regular flight delays. Since China’s first bullet-train service connected Beijing to the nearby port city of Tianjin a decade ago, Chinese airlines have lost customers, especially for journeys shorter than 800 km, roughly the distance from Hong Kong to Changsha, the capital of Mao Zedong’s home province of Hunan. “The fact that passengers will get off the train in downtown Hong Kong rather than at the airport on an island and then have to take another train ride to the city will prompt many to choose trains,” said Yu Zhanfu, a partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Beijing. A bullet-train ride can cost less than half the price of a ticket on Cathay to the 11 overlapping destinations, with the biggest savings for routes of less than 800 km. Passengers would also save time on pre-boarding security checks required for flights and travel to and from airports. With 11 of Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.’s more than 20 China destinations overlapping with high-speed rail, the Hong Kong marquee carrier stands to be the biggest casualty.<br/>