Hong Kong moved its airport to an island to escape a runway in the city
Old Kai Tak airport sat in crowded Kowloon, its lone runway poking into the bay, with jet noise above 105 decibels disturbing an estimated 340,000 people. Its replacement was built on the small island of Chek Lap Kok, where planes fly over sea, and it became the world's busiest cargo airport.
Kai Tak, built in 1925, had been stretched far beyond what it was designed for by the 1990s. It was a hub for airlines, freight and maintenance, yet roughly one flight in three was delayed because there was no room for more gates, parking stands or a second runway, and noise rules limited night flights.
The idea of moving was not new. A 1974 planning study picked out Chek Lap Kok, off Lantau Island, because flight paths could run over the South China Sea rather than dense housing, allowing several runways to operate around the clock. Master planning was done in 1982 and 1983, but the government shelved the project in February 1983 for financial reasons. A new strategy study led by the consultants Mott MacDonald, reporting in December 1989, weighed keeping Kai Tak, building in the Western Harbour, or going to Chek Lap Kok. The governor announced the Chek Lap Kok choice in October 1989.
Consultants said the airport could open no sooner than January 1998; the government pushed for January 1997, ahead of the handover to China that July. Construction began in 1991. Margaret Thatcher opened the Tsing Ma Bridge, the main road link to Lantau and the airport, in April 1997, and the airport itself opened in July 1998. Its passenger terminal was the largest in the world at the time.
Today three runways, each 3.8 kilometres long, operate 24 hours a day. The airport is the main base of Cathay Pacific and several other local airlines, and more than 100 carriers fly to over 180 cities. In 2010 it overtook Memphis as the busiest airport for cargo. It handled 49.9 million international passengers in 2024, ninth in the world, and employed about 60,000 people at the start of that year. Hong Kong's air travel industry generated US$33 billion in 2018, some 10.2 percent of the city's GDP.
Source: Hong Kong International Airport
