Busy passenger traffic during the Lunar New Year holiday in February has set a new record in aircraft movements at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA).

In February, aircraft movements grew 7.9% over February last year, reaching 22,290 movements. A record of 872 movements was set on February 16, two days before the Lunar New Year Day. Passenger and cargo throughput for the month reached 3.63 million and 230,000 tonnes, respectively, up 10.8% and 2.6% over the corresponding period last year.

In the past 12 months, passenger and cargo throughput reached 44.82 million and 3.59 million tonnes respectively, representing year-on-year rises of 8.3% and 4.1%. Aircraft movements were 282,535, 5.5% higher than the same period in 2005/06.

New facilities are being built to meet future demand. Airport Authority Hong Kong's Airport Management Director Mr Howard Eng said, "A new lead-in taxiway, J1A, has been built to provide greater flexibility for air traffic controllers in sequencing departing aircraft, thus boosting the on-time performance of departure flights at HKIA. The new taxiway is part of the HK$4.5 billion facilities and capacity enhancement projects that we embarked on in 2006."

Lead-in taxiways are paths for aircraft to get onto the runways for departure. The J1A lead-in taxiway is located on the west side of the South Runway and will commence operation in late March.