Heavy overseas travel during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday boosted February's passenger throughput at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) to over 3.1 million, an increase of 28.6 percent over the same period last year.

Hong Kong's Airport Authority said on Sunday in a press release that the airport experienced the busiest ever Lunar New Year holidays with a single-day record passenger number of 150,000 on Feb 13.

The average daily traffic over the festive period amounted to around 118,000 per day, an increase of 10 percent compared to the same period last year. The festive period is defined as a 16-day period from the Saturday before Lunar New Year Day and the Sunday one week after.

Driven by the strong growth in passenger throughput, aircraft movements rose to 19,075, up 10.9 percent compared to the same month last year.

Cargo throughput in the month slightly dropped by 3.1 percent to 216,000 tons owing to slack traffic that normally takes place during the holidays.

In the past 12 months, over 37.8 million passengers traveled through HKIA, an increase of more than 38.2 percent compared to the corresponding period last year. Cargo tonnage rose 16.0 percent to 3.14 million. Aircraft movements recorded a buoyant 26.8 percent increase to 240,030.

(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2005)