Up to 160,000 passengers are expected to go through Hong Kong airport each day during the upcoming Christmas holiday period, officials said on Wednesday.

The Airport Authority also said there will be more than 1,000 flights coming in and out of the SAR daily, with 760 of them carrying passengers.

Steven Yiu, executive director of airport operations, said the airport is currently handling over 960 flights per day, reaching 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Around 150,000 people have been using the airport each day on average, which is around 75 percent of the pre-pandemic number.

The busiest routes are to and from Taipei, Shanghai and Bangkok, Yiu said.

He said airport traffic is not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until the end of next year at the earliest, adding that airlines have been working to tackle a bottleneck in boosting flight capacity.

"Airlines around the world are speeding up the maintenance of aircraft for more flights. We've also seen local airlines actively training pilots. The manpower crunch in ground service staff has been relieved," he said.

Yiu said more than 1,000 non-local aviation workers hired under an imported labour scheme are expected to arrive in Hong Kong in the next few months.

He added that the airport started using driverless vehicles to deliver luggage between the main terminal and the midfield concourse that was reopened in October.

"We hope that when the third runway is in use, the number of driverless vehicles will increase from about 40 currently to 100. This is our short-term goal," Yiu said.