After a brief respite early August 13 during which flights were able to take off and land, the airport authority announced that check-in services for departing flights were suspended. Other departing flights that had completed the process would continue to operate.
It said it did not expect arriving flights to be affected, though dozens of arriving flights were already cancelled. The authority advised the public not to come to the airport, one of the world’s busiest transport hubs.
On August 12, more than 200 flights were cancelled and the airport was effectively shut down with no flights taking off or landing.
Passengers have been forced to seek accommodation in the city while airlines struggle to find other ways to get them to their destinations.
The airport protests and their disruption are an escalation of a summer of demonstrations aimed at what many Hong Kong residents see as an increasing erosion of the freedoms they were promised in 1997 when the Communist Party-ruled mainland China took over what had been a British colony.
Those doubts are fuelling the protests, which build on a previous opposition movement that shut down much of the city for seven weeks in 2014 that eventually fizzled out and whose leaders have been imprisoned.
The central government in Beijing ominously characterized the current protest movement as something approaching “terrorism” that posed an “existential threat” to the local citizenry.
Meanwhile, paramilitary police were assembling across the border in the city of Shenzhen for exercises in what some saw as a threat to increase force brought against the mostly young protesters who have turned out in their thousands over the past 10 weeks.
The demonstrators have shown no sign of letting up on their campaign to force chief executive Carrie Lam’s administration to respond to their demands, including that she step down and entirely scrap legislation that could have seen criminal suspects sent to mainland China to face torture and unfair or politically charged trials.
The airport shutdown added to what authorities say is already a major blow to the financial hub’s crucial tourism industry .
Kerry Dickinson, a traveller from South Africa, said she had trouble getting her luggage Tuesday morning.
The protests early on were staged in specific neighbourhoods near government offices. However, the airport protest had a direct impact on business travel and tourism . Analysts said it could make foreign investors think twice about setting up shop in Hong Kong, which has long prided itself as being Asia’s leading business city with convenient air links across the region.
The black-clad protesters on Tuesday held up signs in Simplified Chinese and English to appeal to travellers from mainland China and other parts of the world. “Democracy is a good thing,” said one sign .
Adding to the protesters’ anger, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways told employees in a memo that the carrier has “zero tolerance” for employees joining “illegal protests” and warned violators could be fired.
