Page 41 - Demo

While we might be losing out to our neighbours in the competition on container cargo, we are still holding a firm lead in terms of air cargo. The last thing we want is for our airfreight business to go down the same path as our maritime sector.HKIA, currently ranked the world’s busiest cargo airport, is also facing potential space constraints. A comparison of the world’s top ten cargo airports showed that HKIA is supporting more air cargo with less logistics land at the airport, with the ratio of airport logistics land supply to air cargo tonnage being second lowest among all airports. Even taking into account the practice of multistorey development in Hong Kong, the ratio of Gross Floor Area to air cargo tonnage at HKIA is also one of the lowest among all airports (Table 4).As the three-runway system at HKIA will be completed in 2024, HKIA will accommodate more aircraft movements which could potentially push annual cargo traffic to 8.9 million tonnes by 2030, 1.5 million tonnes more than the current capacity of 7.4 million tonnes provided by existing air logistics facilities. Therefore, additional provision for logistics facilities at HKIA is needed.39