Chek Lap Kok is Critics' Choice

(HONG KONG, 2 January 1999) -- Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) has won the annual Critics' Choice Award of Travel & Leisure magazine.

The prestigious panel of critics consists of famous travellers such as Michael Bloomberg, CEO and founder of Bloomberg LP; Jeffrey Steingarten, food critic of Vogue magazine and Francoise Labro, Vice President for Image, Advertising and Public Relations at Polo Ralph Lauren, Europe and Bill Fischer, President of Fischer Travel. Mr Fischer describes the airport as "excellent" and says: "Now that the airport is past some initial hitches, our clients love it."

Travel & Leisure, the foremost US travel magazine, is just the latest in a growing number of publications world-wide full of praise for the new airport.

Writing in the latest edition of Wings magazine of Canada, Richard Purser described it as "Hong Kong's wonder airport." He said: "Chek Lap Kok is a masterpiece of design and engineering, it is everything it is billed to be - the world's engineering achievement of the 90s, as perhaps Europe's Chunnel was the achievement of the 80s."

In the San Francisco Examiner, David Armstrong wrote: "The startling absence of crowds - the airport was built oversized - makes it easy to get around. The Chek Lap Kok passenger terminal, though huge, is well organised."

Although he says in most cities getting to and from the airport is the worst part of flying, Armstrong is full of praise for the transport connections to the airport which, he says, is "the centrepiece of a US$20 billion construction binge that built two new bridges, 18 miles of expressways and a rail line linking the airport to the city of 6.6 million people."

The Airport Authority also reports that increasing levels of satisfaction by airport users has resulted in a growing number of letters from travellers praising the airport's facilities and staff.

Letters to the Editor in local newspapers tell of various experiences such as that recounted by Thomas Abbott of the USA: "On my recent visit to Hong Kong I discovered it to be the finest, most beautiful airport I have ever used. The staff were friendly, helpful and efficient."

As an editorial in Wings magazine concludes: "The early computer foul-ups at Chek Lap Kok attracted world-wide publicity. Passenger operations were cleared up within days while the vast cargo operations was a disaster area for a month or so. But everything's running fine now and there's no doubt that the billions of dollars it cost to build the airport was money well spent."

Ref. PR-409