Shopping Mall with Flight Check-in

My parents flew back to Singapore this morning after staying with us for three weeks and the wife and I saw them off at the airport. Hong Kong International Airport's Terminal 2 has just been officially opened and we decided to check it out after bidding farewell to Mum and Dad at the security checkpoint.

The HK Govt had built this extension to ease congestion at the existing terminal. While HKIA is visibly much busier than Changi, I did not really see the need for expansion yet. I suppose it's a case of "build it and more of them will come".

Terminal 2 is nothing but a shopping mall with airline check in facilities.

Right now, only passengers flying on 2 airlines - Oasis Hong Kong Airlines (a long-haul budget carrier that flies to London and Vancouver) or Emirates- check in at T2. Unlike most other airports with more than one terminal building, in HK all the planes are still parked at Terminal 1. After collecting their boarding passes at T2, passengers will descend to the basement, clear immigration and security checkpoints, and then take an underground train to T1 to board their planes.

So aircraft still use T1 to board and disembark passengers. As a result, there is no Arrivals Hall at T2.

As you can see in the pics below, T2 is still pretty under-utilised. A quick browse of the Departures listing on the HKIA website, and I see that Emirates has three, and Oasis only one, flight out of HK today. It should get busier when another two airlines - Thai and Qatar - move their check-in counters there soon. Most passengers using T1 are probably too lazy to walk over to T2 or are not aware of the variety of shops and food outlets there.






The Airport Authority did not even bother to man the information counters. With the Emirates and Oasis flights leaving late at night, none of their check-in counters were open during the day too.


Many shops were still not opened at 11:30am. And while the food establishments were enjoying a steady of flow of customers during lunchtime, most of them were airport employees and construction workers from a nearby work site.


HKIA is truly a transportation hub. On the floor below the Departure Hall, arriving passengers can buy tickets for coaches that will take them directly to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan and other cities in southern China. The airport also has a ferry terminal where high-speed ferries ply routes between the airport and Macau, Zhuhai and a number of ports in the Pearl River Delta.

The wife and I did have fun walking around the near-empty mall (something unthinkable in HK), had lunch and blew about HK$50 (S$10) on tokens at a video arcade. (An employee there said that, with five customers there at the time, it was considered relatively busy already)

With such low shopper/passenger traffic, business for the tenants at T2 is expected to be poor for now so the Airport Authority is waiving their rents from March till August. For now, I think the Filipino domestic helpers of HK have a great new place to congregate at on Sundays.