Govt welcomes lifting of flight restrictions

The government on Monday welcomed decisions by Japan and South Korea to lift restrictions imposed on Hong Kong flights starting from March.

Japanese authorities have been limiting the number of flights from Hong Kong since late December, while flights from Hong Kong to South Korea have been restricted to landing only at Incheon Airport since early January.

The government said it had been requesting the two countries scrap the “unreasonable restrictions”, and noted that they had now agreed to lift them on March 1.

Transport minister Lam Sai-hung said the Civil Aviation Department and the Airport Authority would provide assistance to airlines to reschedule earlier cancelled flights.

“The government believes that the lifting of the relevant restrictions by the Japanese and Korean authorities can bring more convenience to travellers and help speed up the recovery of Hong Kong’s aviation industry,” it wrote in a statement.

Japanese broadcaster TBS had earlier cited government sources as saying that passengers from Hong Kong and Macau will no longer be required to do any on-arrival and pre-boarding Covid tests.

That came before Japan’s top government spokesperson announced that Covid restrictions on travellers from China would be eased from Wednesday, when the requirement that they take a test for the virus on arrival would be dropped.

Instead of blanket testing of travellers from the mainland, Japan will only test selected samples, although travellers will still need to show a negative test before boarding their flights to Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference on Monday.