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Hong Kong International Airport (HKG): arrival & transit guide

What to expect landing at Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: the arrival flow, transit rules, and onward transport.

Hong Kong International Airport handles almost all arrivals through Terminal 1; a second terminal covers additional departure facilities but arriving passengers land into Terminal 1 regardless of airline. From the gate, signage leads to immigration, then baggage claim, then customs.

Hong Kong maintains one of the more generous visa-free regimes anywhere, admitting visitors from well over a hundred countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe, for a period ranging roughly a week to three months depending on nationality, without a visa arranged in advance. A smaller group of nationalities needs a visa to actually enter the city.

Transit is unusually flexible here: nearly every nationality, including many that would otherwise need a visa to enter Hong Kong, can transit airside for up to 24 hours without any visa at all, as long as the connection stays within the transit area on a through-ticket. A short list of nationalities is excluded from that airside allowance and does need a transit visa; leaving the airport during a layover, for any nationality, means going through ordinary immigration under the entry rules above instead of the transit ones.

Outside the terminal, the Airport Express train, buses, and taxis all run into central Hong Kong.

All passports for Hong Kong