Hong Kong’s nearly empty airport gets $18b expansion

It could be one of the world’s most expensive white elephants. Hong Kong opened its new, third runway at its airport on Friday morning, part of a HK$141.5b ($18b) project that will increase its footprint by 50%, adding 650 hectares (1,606 acres), equivalent to the size of Gibraltar. Also under construction is a HK$20 billion entertainment, retail and commercial complex being built by local conglomerate New World Development Co. that will be larger than New York’s Grand Central Terminal. It’s all designed to solidify the city’s role as a global aviation hub, but comes at a time when the government’s flight bans and quarantine rules have crushed demand for air travel to and from Hong Kong. The policies “seem to have been almost designed to try to kill off Cathay Pacific and the Hong Kong hub,” said Robert Boyle, founder of London-based aviation advisory Gridpoint Consulting. Only 545,000 passengers passed through the airport in the first five months of 2022 versus 31.4m in the same period of 2019. After more than two years of isolation, Hong Kong was “off the map” as a global hub, the head of the IATA said in April. “Every day that passes it becomes more difficult for Hong Kong,” IATA director general Willie Walsh said last month, speaking at an industry summit. “I think it’s going to be a really hard job for Hong Kong to regain its former glory.”<br/>