A pilot phase is underway in collaboration with airports in Hangzhou and Wuhan.
The new initiative is part of the national aviation programme named: “Trunk-Branch Connectivity, Whole-Network Linkage”.
Passengers can check in for their entire journey at their local airports, and fly out to international destinations via Hong Kong, instead of having to re-claim their luggage and then check in again in the SAR.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of this year’s Super Terminal Expo, Chan described the scheme as a game-changing service.
“To put this into perspective, this transfer platform is already active across more than 260 airports in the mainland and has accumulatively facilitated over 260 million transfer passengers, allowing tens of millions of travellers to enjoy the unprecedented convenience of one-stop check-in and seamless baggage transfers,” she said.
“This is far more than a commercial expansion. It is a policy breakthrough, which embeds Hong Kong directly into the national overall aviation architecture.”
Chan stressed that Hong Kong International Airport plays a vital “linchpin role” to fulfil the SAR’s unique mandate as a super-connector and a super value-adder that bridges the country and the world.
Enhancing connectivity between the world’s second-largest economy and the rest of the world, she said, also unlocks tremendous opportunities for trade and aviation.
To facilitate this goal, Chan noted that Hong Kong had also set a target of expanding its global aviation network from the existing 220 destinations to 240 under its recently unveiled five-year plan.
