The OnBoard Courier for Hong Kong

The scheduled network file behind this site holds departure data for one airport in Hong Kong. The largest is Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok (HKG), the airport at Hong Kong, with 144 scheduled destinations in 45 countries flown by 74 airlines and about 478.9 departures a day. That single airport carries 100 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country, which is the first thing a desk needs to know: there is no realistic second gateway, so a cancellation there is a lost day.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From HKG alone, 1,829 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 144 served nonstop. A gateway that multiplies its own reach that far with one change is a hub in the useful sense: almost anywhere is two boarding passes away. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

0 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 0 domestic destinations. With no domestic network at all, everything past the gateway is a road move. A consignee away from the gateway is a road leg, and the road leg is where the hours go.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to China, about 113 flights a day, Japan, about 70.3 flights a day, Taiwan, about 57.9 flights a day, South Korea, about 29.3 flights a day and Thailand, about 27.9 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from Hong Kong without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from Hong Kong to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

74 airlines fly out of Hong Kong in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to Cathay Pacific on 76 routes, Hong Kong Express on 33 routes, Hong Kong Airlines on 27 routes, Homer Air on 19 routes and China Eastern Airlines on 10 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of HKG in this data runs to Dallas-Fort Worth, United States (DFW), 13,053 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

From the Emirates, Hong Kong is reached nonstop. The network file records 1 such pair: Jebel Ali to Hong Kong (HKG), about 4.1 a day on Air Atlanta Icelandic, ASL Airlines Belgium and EAT Leipzig. A single nonstop pair is a thin thread, and the desk plans a connecting alternative for the same day before it accepts the assignment.

The carriers on those sectors are Air Atlanta Icelandic, ASL Airlines Belgium, EAT Leipzig, Emirates, Silk Way West and Turkish Airlines. With this many, the choice is an operational one rather than a preference: cabin baggage allowances, what each airline accepts as a carry on item and how it treats an extra seat purchase all differ, and those three things decide whether the consignment travels in the cabin at all.

Hong Kong runs 4h ahead of Dubai. That is why the departure chosen matters more than the flight time: the same sector can land inside the consignee's working day or an hour after it closed, depending on which bank the courier makes. At this offset the working days overlap for only part of the afternoon, which is the window a signature has to land in. The desk works the arrival backwards from the moment the recipient can sign, not forwards from the moment the item is ready.

The operating notes file records one entry for HKG, under night operations: Operates around the clock. Night departures to Europe and the Gulf are routine.

This site publishes 11 lane pages that cross the border of Hong Kong. Leaving Hong Kong: Hong Kong to Frankfurt, Hong Kong to Melbourne, Hong Kong to Singapore, Hong Kong to Tokyo and Hong Kong to Vancouver. Arriving: Abu Dhabi to Hong Kong, Doha to Hong Kong, Dubai to Hong Kong, London to Hong Kong, Milan to Hong Kong and Zurich to Hong Kong.

Each of those has its own page with the flying time, the gateway pair and what actually moves on it. Read together they say something the individual pages do not: the places Hong Kong is connected to on this desk are Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Singapore, Tokyo, Vancouver, London and Milan, plus 1 more. A lane page exists because the traffic on it is real, not because the pair looked plausible on a map.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 5 city pages, 2 standalone city pages, 1 Atlas entry, 11 lane pages and 8 trade and history pages for Hong Kong, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page, the entry and formalities guide, the travel and connections page and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. The country page sells, the city pages answer, and the lane pages price. They are kept apart because a reader arrives at exactly one of those three questions and merging them would bury the other two.