Wife didn’t try to go to boarding gate, says CY Leung, contradicting Airport Authority report on left luggage saga

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has blamed miscommunication and mistranslation for conflicting claims as to whether his wife tried to take their daughter’s left luggage into a restricted area at Hong Kong International Airport.

A report on the incident released by the Airport Authority on Monday raised eyebrows by describing how Leung’s wife, Regina Leung Tong Ching-yee, “appeared upset” and “couldn’t understand why no one could help her” and started walking towards the boarding gate to personally hand over the baggage left behind by their younger daughter, Leung Chung-yan.

“Avseco [security] staff tried to stop Mrs Leung, but Mrs Leung kept walking to L7 North Pre-immigration,” the report said.

Leung suggested on Tuesday there might have been confusion at the time, leading some to believe his wife wanted to take the luggage directly to the gate. She only wanted to go to the pre-immigration clearance area, he said. The chief executive also noted that the conversation at the time was conducted in Cantonese while the report was written in English, suggesting there could have been a translation error.

In the report, the authority denied that any safety protocols were broken or special privileges granted when Chung-yan’s baggage, which was left in a non-restricted area, was eventually brought to her inside a closed-off zone last month.

The report highlighted 517 “courtesy deliveries” of lost and found items from March 2015 to March 2016, suggesting what happened with Chung-yan’s luggage was common.

But a representative of the authority yesterday confirmed these were done under different circumstances than the incident in question.