New Hong Kong airport luggage rules ‘great danger’ to security, cabin crew say

Union calls for return of previous policy on the presence of passengers during bag screening, and demands officials talk to it on the issue

Reading Time:2 minutes

Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok. Photo: Fung Chang

Published: 4:14pm, 14 Sep 2018Updated: 11:15pm, 14 Sep 2018

Luggage rules at Hong Kong airport believed to have been secretly relaxed to beat a lawsuit concerning the daughter of the city’s former leader Leung Chun-ying should be reinstated, a local flight attendants’ union said on Friday.

The demand from the Cabin Crew Federation followed a letter issued by the union on September 5 requesting a meeting with Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu to help resolve deadlocked debate on the issue “in the most constructive and productive way”.

The city’s High Court last month ruled, at the end of a judicial review brought by a federation member, that airport chiefs broke security rules by delivering a forgotten bag to then chief executive Leung’s daughter at a boarding gate two years ago.

Federation spokeswoman Carol Ng (centre) on Friday said the new rules had created a great danger to security, and there was a real need to reinstate the old practice. Photo: Winson Wong

At issue was whether hand luggage could be taken through security screening without the passenger – in this case Leung Chung-yan – accompanying it, and whether airport bosses had succumbed to authority and compromised aviation safety.

The Hong Kong Aviation Security Programme had required passengers to be present for the screening of “all cabin baggage”. But the rules were amended in April, two months before the court heard the judicial review, and airport staff were unaware of the change until the court revealed it at the hearing.