'Most flights will depart Sunday afternoon, night'

The Airport Authority said that most flights will resume after noon on Sunday, as Typhoon Noul continues to move away from Hong Kong.

Approximately 675 flights are expected to be processed, but around 350 cancellations have already been confirmed.

Wing Yeung, the authority’s director of service delivery, warned that the airport would remain exceptionally busy on Sunday, particularly in the evening and potentially throughout the night.

To clear the backlog, he said all three runways could be activated overnight if necessary, with the aim of returning to a full schedule by Monday morning.

Yeung also provided details on the situation overnight, in which around 2,000 people remained stranded at the airport due to the typhoon, most of whom were outbound passengers waiting to board their flights.

To ease the disruption, the authority kept some restaurants and shops open around the clock and added extra seating throughout the terminal.

"The Airport Authority also arranged about 100 staff members to assist travellers, including distributing water, blankets and snacks," he said.

"During the period when the No. 9 typhoon signal was in effect, we also issued cash meal vouchers to arriving passengers, so that they could wait at the eateries while public transport services gradually resumed."

The authority also activated their electronic taxi queuing system after the No. 8 Signal took effect, issuing roughly 1,800 queue tickets.

At its peak, about 400 passengers were waiting for taxis, though most had managed to leave the airport by 4am.

Following the resumption of Airport Express services on Sunday morning, the vast majority of arriving passengers had successfully departed the airport.

Edited by Tony Sabine ...