HONG KONG, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Both passenger and cargo volume of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) dropped sharply in August as illegal assemblies and violent acts severely disrupted its operation, data showed Sunday.
The HKIA handled six million passengers last month, down 12.4 percent from a year ago, the Airport Authority (AA) Hong Kong said in a statement. There were 35,655 air traffic movements in August, down 3.5 percent year on year.
The declines were mainly attributable to falling visitor traffic as those to and from the Chinese mainland, Southeast Asia and China's Taiwan experienced significant declines compared to the same period a year ago.
The statement said airport and flight operations were disrupted by the assemblies at the airport on a number of days. "In the past few months, there have been huge challenges to airport operations at times," C K Ng, executive director of airport operations of the AA said.
Cargo volume continued to contract in August, with trans-shipments and imports down 19 percent and 15 percent year on year, respectively. Of all, the figures for Southeast Asia and the Chinese mainland decreased most significantly among Hong Kong's key trading regions.
Over the first eight months, HKIA handled 50.6 million passengers and 285,495 air traffic movements, up 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, compared to the same period last year. Cargo throughput recorded 3.08 million, down 7.4 percent year on year.
