Flights resume as typhoon moves on after battering Hong Kong
Airlines staffs and ticketing agents are struggling to reschedule 2,000 flights either cancelled or delayed after Typhoon Mangkhut slammed through one of the world’s busiest Hong Kong International Airport on September 16.
Hong Kong is limping back to normalcy as the Hong Kong Observatory lowered its rating 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.
About 900 flights will be rescheduled today and a total of 2,000 within 48 hours, said Jack So Chak-kwong, chairman of the Airport Authority.
A total of 889 flights were cancelled on September 16, when Mangkhut battered Hong Kong for 10 hours with fierce winds and a record-breaking storm surge.
The two runways at Hong Kong International Airport will 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 September 16.
As airline services gradually resumed, passengers stranded at the airport looked for the earliest flights out of Hong Kong or faced uncertainty over departure times after a string of delays and cancellations.
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.
