I just passed through Hong Kong Airport (HKG) for the first time in years (since before the pandemic). Hong Kong has long been one of my favorite airports in the world, but a new amenity really takes it to the next level for us aviation geeks.
Continue reading: Hong Kong Airport Sky Bridge: Plane Spotter Paradise
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Pretty nice. DEN has something similar between the main concourse and terminal A, but obviously not as advanced or nice as this.
I'm just glad the world is open for business again (especially that part of the world). It's been a rough couple of years especially in Hong Kong. I know it's not part of the trip report, but I would've loved to see a CX A321neo review.
DEN, LGW, LGA, SEA all have skybridges.
The HKG market, as it existed in 2018-2019 is unlikely to ever return.
Hong Kong is just a province of Greater China now. Singapore has displaced it is a major hub of finance.
The skybridge is inconvenient and it’s mostly for LCC aka HK express. Landing at satellites terminal means a long walk with lots of people through the bottom of skybridge before getting to immigration.
An airport is an airport.
If you happen to be there, nothing wrong to go for a look, nothing to do with financial market.
If other airports have them, I would love to see them too.
If you look a bit to the side, rather than straight ahead and down, you can see planes landing and taking off on one of the runways. I think the Intervals bar and the Sky Deck are at the opposite ends of the bridge, so the views are a bit different. Intervals was deserted around 11 am local time (hey, it's an airport bar and it was 5 pm somewhere).
Had a few hours there on a rather circuitous BOS-LAX-TPE-HKG-NAN-TVU itinerary 🙂 5 separate tickets, all (longish) connections worked out except for the habitually delayed JetBlue BOS-LAX that I had to replace last minute by a United flight. JetBlue is a nice airline, they will get you to your destination in above average comfort, usually within just a few hours of the original schedule 🙂 Missed Ben on the Starlux flight by a couple of days.
LOL. People had the same ridiculous reaction to London post Brexit. "Omg omg omg, businesses are going to flee to Paris/Frankfurt/Brussels and London will be but a shriveled shadow of its former self!"
Was there some redistribution after the 2019 riots and the post-Covid ties to the mainland? Sure. Have Singapore and Tokyo benefited from some investor discomfort fueled by political uncertainty? Yes.
Is Hong Kong, and its airport, going to be reduced to some backwater? Hardly.
Doubtful that traffic is going to be 70million+ any time soon, as it was. But they're already 60% recovered, with no signs of the month-over-month and year-over-year growth abating.
So sad to see what has happened to a once buzzing airport. China truly had a bright future but since the pandemic they have decided to bury themselves and anyone around them who shows the purely free market works.
About the T1 Satellite (Gate 13-22) at HKG:
The building opened it's doors in 2007 - at then it was called North Satellite Concourse (NSC) and the gates are numbered as 501-510. All gates over there are designed for narrowbodies only. A bus shuttle through the main terminal and NSC 24/7 since the then management team of Hong Kong Airport wish to cut cost and determine that shuttle bus would be sufficient. Seems like you might not have flown out from this building in the past as most of your flights ex-HKG seems to be widebodies - means no chance of heading there.
Skybridge was an attempt to better connect NSC to main terminal. Yet as an afterthought solution 2 gates have to be sacrificed - 1 each on the main terminal and NSC. NSC also renamed into T1 Satellite and gates are re-numbered into 13-22 at similar times when the Skybridge almost completed to reflect the enhanced connection with T1 main building.
This name change also reduces confusion with the new Satellite building for T2 that is still under construction and would not open until early-2025 - you can see the construction site if you're seated on the left side - the building is situated between the old North runway. (Closed for reconfiguration by now) and the new runway.
Wow, while reading this, in the back of my mind I was thinking "I THINK I saw something like this when I flew into LGA last summer." Hadn't been to NYC in ages, so it was kinda cool to see.
Hope to get to Hong Kong to see the bridge.
CX - please open up some J award flights (AS points) soon as I need a ride to Bali/Bangkok/Brisbane soon).
Tough to tell if you're just trolling, or actually dumb enough to find that witty...
"...already 60% recovered.."
Meanwhile Changi sped past 90% when I last checked (and probably near 100% in 4- 6 weeks time). Sydney is way past 90% as of last week. Incheon is 96% as of September. By comparison, your HK airport is positively anemic at ONLY 60%
The long awaited skybridge project links the main terminal with the satellite terminal which opened more than ten years ago. Before the construction of the skybridge, the satellite terminal(the dreaded 500 gates) required a 10 min bus ride from the main terminal. This was hated by the public as it required a detour and they had to schedule time for the bus.
Can you refresh me as to when HKG became "my" airport?
And while you're at it, tell me when the gunshot for the race was fired... because "last I checked," I didn't say anything about comparative rate of recovery to any other airport, only that HKG was recovering after two severe upsets.
Get to the sky thing earlier this month, so scared to walk on it, I have to say I had a hard time, it is so cool!
You've no idea what you're talking about. UO together with HX uses the midfield concourse (gate 2xx) exclusively, CX A321 fleet is the one that primarily uses the North concourse nowadays.
*Just landed there on CX from MNL last week.
Wtf are you talking about? All pandemic restrictions have been lifted and Chinese airports, including HK are crowded. Please educate yourself instead of relying on CNN and the BBC for your China news.
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Has anyone been able to look at sky bridge in SEA? They built one to simplify customs.
SkyBridge is not separated into top and bottom. Arrivals walk on the east side and departures walk on the west. You can see each other through the glass wall.
I really don't like arriving there. The 4 sets of really slow (for HK) escalators is a slog to get from there to immigration.
Is the Sky Bridge accessible after security? Do you need a boarding pass to get to the bridge? No good if it’s just for passengers.
There are other existing tarmac bridges in the US, however this one in HK was constructed to attract the enthusiast as well. What a concept.
Scheduling my HKG transits to be on the long side so I can check out things like this!