In a press release today, SAS announces that they are suspending flights between Hong Kong and Copenhagen effective March 5, 2020.
They do not specify until when the flights will remain canceled, so I guess this is subject to future demand.
In the same press release they also say they are suspending a number of short haul flights within Europe over the next couple of month, so based on that I think it is safe to say the route to Hong Kong will be suspended at least until the end of April.
As I wrote about earlier, Cathay together with American Express has a promo for twin bookings, which I have taken advantage of, and booked a trip to Taipei, and also a trip to Bangkok. Total price for the two return trips was 3500 HKD, and this will give me 2700 Asia Miles, plus 7000 miles through the promotion.
After the 15 minutes bus ride from our remote parked aircraft I decided it was worth going to the hotel for a few hours, as I needed more sleep and it anyways would be a way to keep the kids busy while we were waiting for our onward flight to Norway.
Hong Kong has recently introduced travel restrictions for people traveling from South Korea to Hong Kong – only holders of Hong Kong ID cards are allowed to enter Hong Kong, and they would have to go to 2 weeks home quarantine, whereas travelers with no Hong Kong ID are not allowed to enter at all.
So, leaving the house at 17:00 we quickly arrived at the airport, where check-in was quickly completed after passing through the first set of security screening. At check-in we also got a voucher for our free stop-over in Dubai, we had been allocated Le Meridien hotel, which is just across the street from the terminal, so I decided we would have to use that as well, as long as we arrive on time. We then proceeded to fill in immigration forms for the kids, as they have Philippino passports, and then we had to clear immigration, before there is another security screening, and then we are finally in the boarding area.
After killing a little bit of time in the terminal, we were quickly starting boarding, and we were greeted by the door by one of the cabin crew, and showed to our seats, which were 7 D E F. Emirates operates with 7 seat abreast in Business Class on their Boeing 777s, in a 2-3-2 configuration, so this suited us well so we could sit together.
The Cathay Pacific Group has released combined Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon traffic figures for January 2020 that show decreases in the number of passengers carried and the amount of cargo and mail uplifted compared to the same month in 2019.
We had already spent summer holiday in Norway this year (trip report here), and since it is far and expensive to travel there I was just planning on bringing the kids to Hong Kong for Christmas. However, I did put my leave dates into google flights and kept an eye on the price, and when I found some surprisingly cheap tickets with Emirates in business class I decided to bring them to Norway for Christmas, and hopefully see some snow :
The provisional Civil International Air Traffic Statistics at HKIA January 2020 has been released, and as expected it continues to show the downwards trend from earlier months. This downwards trend is mostly due to the Hong Kong Protests, as the effect of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) was not taking place yet.
Hong Kong Airlines has announced that they will effective today cancel inflight service on their flights.
According to the airline it is ” To further strengthen our precautionary measures and reduce the risk of our crew and customers from being potentially exposed to coronavirus, Hong Kong Airlines will be limiting inflight cabin activity and making temporary adjustments to our onboard services. “