A day after a pro-democracy protest brought the Hong Kong airport to a standstill, the airport authorities on Tuesday cancelled more than 300 flights.
The city’s leader Carrie Lam condemned the demonstrations saying that “lawbreaking activites in the name of freedom” were damaging the rule of law.
On Tuesday morning, stranded passengers were seen lining up to catch their delayed flights, as airport authorities announced that it will implement rescheduling while blaming demonstrators for the disruption at one of the world’s busiest airports, Aljazeera reported.
Passengers with luggage were being checked in for fights, and only a handful of the thousands of protesters who flooded into the airport a day earlier remained in the building.
The flight status board at the departures hall showed several flights listed as “boarding soon” with new take-off times listed for others.
According to South China Morning Post, as many as 160 outbound and 150 inbound flights were already cancelled for the rest of the day on Tuesday.
Kerry Dickinson, a traveller from South Africa, said she doubts if she will ever fly to Hong Kong again after experiencing the delays.
“My flight was after midnight and everywhere on the website it was like ‘the flight is still on’. So, I came to the airport and it was cancelled and I’m still waiting, like seven hours,” she said.
With a short warning, airport authorities cancelled all outgoing flights on Monday afternoon, as thousands of protesters started to gather in the departure and arrival areas of the airport.
The protests, which have seen both sides adopt increasingly extreme tactics, had until Monday been mostly confined to neighbourhoods across the former British colony.