At the TIACA Executive Summit 2025 in Hong Kong a couple of weeks’ ago, Hong Kong International Airport unveiled a “first-of-its-kind digital solution” called ‘HKIA Cargo Connect’ during a panel with the same name, subtitled ‘Powering Airline Partnerships at HKIA’, held on 25JUN25. There, Starlux Airlines, CMA CGM AIR CARGO, Hong Kong Air Cargo Carrier Limited, and Turkish Cargo, who were all among the HKIA Cargo Connect pilot partners, shared strategic insights and success stories highlighting how the solution “empowers collaboration and unlocks new business opportunities.” According to the brief, HKIA Cargo Connect was developed as an “innovative one-stop platform [to] foster interline transshipment collaboration among airlines and enhance operational efficiency, further consolidating HKIA’s position as an international cargo hub”. CargoForwarder wanted to know more about the platform and how airlines are experiencing working with it. It therefore put a number of questions to the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK)’s Corporate Affairs department. Here are the answers.
CFG: HKIA Cargo Connect – how is this a ‘first-of-its-kind’ digital solution? What does it do?
AAHK: HKIA Cargo Connect is the world’s first airport-led initiative to empower airline partnerships through an innovative, intelligent, and interconnected digital ecosystem of the air cargo industry. The platform enables intelligent airline partnerships, leveraging Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA)’s global aviation hub position and extensive network with around 140 airlines connecting to over 200 destinations worldwide.
CFG: What led to the digital solution being developed? What were the pain points?
AAHK: As the world’s busiest cargo airport, it is always our goal to maximize and optimize our network and infrastructure to create more benefits for the air cargo community. HKIA Cargo Connect enables intelligent airline partnerships with enhanced visibility of carriers schedules and details, terminal, contact information, etc., accurately addressing airlines’ current pain points of fragmented and manual communications when establishing interline partnership. With the growing number of new airlines and new destination gateways, HKIA Cargo Connect serves as a common platform to bring together our airline partners to induce more business opportunities and collaborations for all.
CFG: Who participated in the development and who were the test pilots?
AAHK: Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) initiated this idea and formulated a discovery stage during which 9 pilot partners (including airlines, general sales agents, cargo terminal operator) have been interviewed to validate our concept before proceeding to the development stage. Most of these pilot partners have been supportive throughout the testing and launch phases, with some even co-creating successful business cases together.
CFG: What results has the solution brought about? Any figures that show saved time or number of transactions that can be completed in comparison to prior?
AAHK: Prior to the official launch of the platform, we already completed various business cases to demonstrate its capability to fulfill airlines’ real business needs, cultivate relationships among airlines, effectively expand their network, optimize their load capacity, as well as reduce their administrative work in managing their business partners.
CFG: How was the reception of the news on 25JUN25? What were the main questions?
AAHK: The platform is well-received by the community. In the month before its official launch, we introduced this platform to around 40 airlines, with over 90% of them providing positive feedback and expressing a keen interest in using our platform. There have been many enquiries from the industries (not limited to airlines), who are keen to explore and use our platform.
CFG: Has it now gone live properly, or what are the next steps? When will full implementation be complete?
AAHK: The platform is now officially launched. We will continue promoting its usage to all airlines at HKIA and enhancing the platform with more value-added features to facilitate interline partnerships. We are looking forward to enriching its functions subject to users’ responses and experiences at a later stage. Subject to market feedback, the platform can further expand to serve other industry stakeholders, e.g. freight forwarders.
CFG: What challenges were encountered during the pilot phase and how were these overcome?
AAHK: Since this is the first-of-its-kind initiative of AAHK, no reference of any kind can be gathered. We started with a smaller scale proof-of-concept to get initial feedback from the pilot partners before we expanded the scope and scale for the official launch. It is a challenging and adventurous journey for the team to initiate such an idea and put it into full implementation in less than a year.
CFG: Is the solution scalable and will it be made available for other
AAHK: Yes, the solution is highly scalable. As the air cargo landscape continues to evolve, HKIA is committed to continuously expanding the ecosystem beyond the airline community to the broader logistic industry and beyond air freight to connectivity across all dimensions.
HKIA Cargo Connect has been well-received
The unique digital platform created to facilitate interline freight transfers has met with positive reviews, as statements from two of the pilot partners prove:
“We regard HKIA Cargo Connect as more than just a booking interface — it provides a foundation for flexible, collaborative solutions.” – Starlux Airlines “This platform allows our interline and sales teams to focus on what really matters, to unlock growth, which is exactly what we are planning, and we are looking forward to the official launch of the platform.” – Hong Kong Air Cargo Carrier Limited
