Hong Kong International Airport sees 10.2% growth in September passenger traffic

Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) has said it handled 4.86 million passengers in September – up 10.2 per cent from the same period last year – thanks to strong upticks in transit passengers and visitors from mainland China.

The Airport Authority said on Tuesday that there was “steady growth across all key traffic areas” last month, with flights growing seven per cent to over 32,000 and cargo volume increasing 6.3 per cent to 433,000 tonnes.

The double-digit passenger growth was driven primarily by transit passengers, while visitor arrivals also increased five per cent year on year, the authority said.

“Regionally, most markets recorded growth, with the strongest contribution from the Chinese Mainland, while decline in the Middle East continued to ease,” it said in a statement.

Flights between Hong Kong and the Middle East have been disrupted since the US and Israel launched military strikes on Iran in February, triggering wider regional conflicts across the Gulf.

The figures signify a strong performance from HKIA so far this year, as it handled 49.1 million passengers and more than 300,000 flights over the first three quarters of 2026. The airport processed 44.7 million passengers and just over 290,000 flights in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, cargo volume also grew in September on transshipments and imports, which increased 26.9 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively, according to the Airport Authority.

“Southeast Asia and the Chinese Mainland were the main growth drivers [for cargo], offsetting the decline in volume in Europe following the removal of the [European Union’s] duty-free de minimis exemption in July,” the authority said.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.