The First Commercial Flight to Land at Chek Lap Kok International Airport

On July 6, 1998, shortly after half past one in the morning, Kai Tak International Airport officially closed. Its IATA code, HKG, and ICAO code, VHHH, were transferred overnight to its successor as Hong Kong’s sole international airport: Chek Lap Kok International Airport, also known as Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) approximately 28 km (17 miles) west.

About four and a half hours after Kai Tak International Airport closed, Chek Lap Kok International Airport opened at 6 o’clock in the morning. Twenty-five minutes later, Cathay Pacific Flight 292 from Rome was scheduled to land at Chek Lap Kok International Airport and become the first commercial flight to land at Hong Kong's new international airport.

However, another Cathay Pacific flight ended up taking that spot in history. Flying in from New York-JFK, Flight CX889 landed a few minutes before the flight from Rome, thus becoming the first commercial flight to land at Chek Lap Kok International Airport.

Since then, Chek Lap Kok has grown to become one of the busiest passenger airports in the world, handling around 70 million passengers per year. Unfortunately, the airport was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, which it only started recovering from in 2024.