Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) handled 426,000 tonnes of cargo and air mail in April, up by 4.8% year-on-year.
A 17% growth in transhipment cargo contributed heavily to the growth in throughput. Among HKIA’s key trading regions, cargo traffic with North America increased most significantly in the month.
Easter holiday fell in late March this year, as compared to April last year. Balancing out the impact of the holiday, March and April’s combined cargo and airmail throughput rose by 0.9% year-on-year, HKIA’s operator, Airport Authority Hong Kong said.
In March, throughput had decreased by 2.5% to 422,000 tonnes. The decline was mainly attributed to a 12% year-on-year drop in exports, with South Korean and European traffic registering the most significant drops during the month. However, imports rose by 13%.
Over the first four months of this year, HKIA handled 1.6m tonnes of cargo and air mail, up by 4.2% year-on-year.
On a rolling 12-month basis, HKIA handled 5.11m tonnes of cargo and air mail in the 12 months up to the end of April, up by 7.2% over the prior year.
Over the 2017 calendar year, HKIA enjoyed record-breaking cargo throughput of 4.94m tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%..
