Hong Kong officials are working to reserve seats for residents to fly out of the United Arab Emirates at the weekend, as UAE-based carriers have partly resumed service to Hong Kong after large-scale airspace closures caused by military conflicts.
The Dubai-based carrier Emirates has resumed parts of its service starting Thursday, offering over 100 flights from the UAE to other destinations, including Hong Kong.
Etihad Airways, another UAE-based carrier, on Friday said it will begin to resume select services from Abu Dhabi to overseas cities, including Hong Kong.
Hong Kong government officials confirmed on Thursday evening that the authorities have been urging Emirates to add more flights between Dubai and Hong Kong at the earliest opportunity, while racing to secure seats on Saturday and Sunday flight departures for the safe evacuation of its residents.
The statement followed the arrival of an Emirates flight in Hong Kong on Wednesday evening — the first from Dubai to the city since the conflict erupted.
As of 5 pm on Thursday, Hong Kong’s immigration authorities had received about 730 inquiries from residents stranded in the Middle East amid the military conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran that has caused a drastic disruption to air traffic in the Persian Gulf region.
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Some 200 people from Hong Kong have safely left the region, while the rest have confirmed reaching safe locations. The vast majority of inquiries — nearly 90 percent —came from those left in the UAE, official data show.
Airports in Dubai have resumed limited flight operations since Monday, said local authorities, with flights out of the Gulf city now largely operated by UAE-based airlines.
According to earlier media reports, major airports across the UAE, among them Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, are currently handling a limited number of flights.
Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand, Hanoi in Vietnam, and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia are also among the destinations included in Etihad’s tentative recovery schedule — all of which offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival access for Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport holders.
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The SAR government “is maintaining close contact with” carriers serving routes between the Middle East and Hong Kong, keeping track of their flight resumption plans, and will “make efforts” in securing seats and expediting the evacuation of stranded residents, its spokesperson stated, with a note that most airspace and airports across the Middle East remain closed.
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