The order comes after the international financial hub slapped a two-week ban on flights from eight nations, including the US, the UK, Australia and Canada, from Jan 8.
The territory of about 7.5 million launched tougher virus restrictions in recent weeks as it looks to open quarantine-free travel with mainland China, which has pursued a zero-Covid policy.
Under the new flight rules, transit passengers from China and Taiwan will still be allowed to pass through Hong Kong, but transit entries into the mainland are still banned.
The Hong Kong Airport Authority told Nikkei Asia in an email that the measures, set to run from Jan 16 through Feb 15, were launched “to control the spread of the highly infectious omicron variant of Covid-19 and further strengthen the protection of airport staff and other users”.
Once among Asia’s busiest travel hubs, Hong Kong’s flight traffic has plummeted during the pandemic, with arrivals down 21.5% in November from a year earlier, according to the latest available data.
The airport handled just under 1.2 million passengers from January through November 2021, compared with 65.8 million for the same period in 2019.
Today’s announcement was expected to deliver another blow to Hong Kong flagship carrier Cathay Pacific, which handles the majority of the city’s transit passengers.
Cathay did not immediately respond to questions about how the new rules would impact its finances, and it was not clear how many flights would be affected by the regulations.
But the embattled airline is already operating on just 2% of its passenger flight capacity and about 20% of its pre-pandemic cargo capacity.
The freight business was a major revenue driver for the airline.
The transit ban comes as Cathay faces calls from city lawmakers and pro-Beijing media outlets for it to be sanctioned after the omicron outbreak was traced to several of the airline’s crew members.
In response, the government this month issued tighter restrictions on airline crew members suspected of being exposed to the virus, requiring them to quarantine for a week in a hotel instead of isolating at home.
Frankie Yick, a lawmaker representing the transport sector, said the transit ban was not aimed directly at Cathay, but he acknowledged that the drastic measures aimed at the outbreak would dent Hong Kong’s economy.
“We have to find a suitable balance between the economy and handling coronavirus,” he said.
On Wednesday, some Hong Kong lawmakers called for stricter controls on arriving air cargo to quell the outbreak, and legal sanctions against Cathay.
Plummeting air freight levels have already caused supply-chain chaos and could trigger a spike in prices as well as shortages of food, medicine and electronics, city leader Carrie Lam warned.
“The consequences of these cargo policies will be seen very soon,” Lam told legislators Wednesday.
“We almost have no goods coming in via cargo flights.”
Industry experts estimated that logistics costs could jump 30% to 40% in the next few weeks and could last through the second quarter.
“Government policies aimed at preventing the epidemic come first,” said Gary Lau, chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Freight Forwarding and Logistics.
“The government won’t have any leeway.”