Hong Kong is following Beijing’s lead in retaining strict travel curbs, in contrast to a global trend of opening up and living with the coronavirus. Hong Kong has recorded barely any local coronavirus cases in recent months but authorities in the global financial hub have tightened up quarantine rules. “As a result of these findings, we have requested the government to review the decision to place certain groups into government quarantine,” Cathay said. The discovery of the infections led to more than 150 other Cathay employees, including pilots and flight attendants, as well as many household members and community contacts being sent to a government quarantine facility for three weeks. The South China Morning Post, which first reported the firings, cited a source as saying the pilots were suspected of leaving their hotel rooms in Germany. “The individuals concerned are no longer employed by Cathay Pacific,” the company said in a statement issued on Thursday. I've never been but if you really don't want to sit around air-side it might be worth trying that.Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd said it had fired three cargo pilots who were infected with COVID-19 during a layover in Frankfurt, over an unspecified “serious breach” of crew rules while overseas. There are a few things, including an Aviation Discovery Center, outside the secure zone. There's are other restaurants scattered about and your normal shopping places.
The airport has a food court ( Terminal 1, Terminal 2) which has a bunch of Western and Asian chain fast-food places, so you can get some interesting-ish food there. It depends how comfortable you are with the chance of missing your next flight and generally being in a rush for all of the time. Like I say, it's theoretically doable, if you really want to risk it but I strongly doubt it's worth it (remember you'll have to pay for transport as well). Alternatively if you arrive early you might consider trying to get to immigration and looking at the queue, baring in mind the time it'll take you to get back from wherever you're going.įor completeness I'll add that trains to the city are 24 minutes to Hong Kong station in Central about 18 to Kowloon but neither station is really near anything interesting apart from shopping malls - and even getting out of the stations can be a bit of a trek. Now, if you have a diplomatic passport, an APEC card, the frequent visitor e-card or something else that would let you bypass the immigration queues it might be a different story. Īlso, HK immigration may decide to pull you for extra screening - they often do this with citizens from certain countries travelling on their own, but the fact that you're trying to leave the airport in such a small window may raise a flag on it's own. So the chances are you'd get there and have to turn around and get back on the train to go back to the airport.
Trains run around every ten minutes, and the closest place is Asiaworld-Expo as Rory Alsop says.
Which, on average, leaves you about an hour to try to get somewhere. If all the gates are close by and immigration is quiet you might manage the back and forth in thirty minutes, but it's unlikely and in my experience you'll be looking at around at around ninety minutes total for immigration both ways, security coming back in and all the walking. Then you have to factor a potential walk to the departure gate as well as another twenty or thirty minutes getting back through immigration into the airport. Depending on the time of day immigration can take thirty minutes or more. HK is a big airport, so you might spend ten to fifteen minutes just walking to immigration. You might push that to getting to your gate twenty minutes before take off depending on the flight and airline but some airlines will close the gate and not let you get on (other airlines tend to wait for customers for a bit longer, particularly if they know they should be in the airport). On paper it's theoretically possible, in reality - having flown into, out of and through HK a fair amount - I doubt it will work unless you're extremely lucky.Īssuming you want to get to your departure gate thirty minutes before take-off then you have 150 minutes of spare time.