The Airport Authority said its recruitment push on Friday is to prepare for Hong Kong's full return to normalcy following the pandemic.

Steven Yiu, the executive director of airport operations, said passenger numbers have returned to 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels, with sufficient staff on board.

However, he said the ongoing career fair hopes to attract more than 3,000 new employees to prepare for future demand.

“Currently, I think excluding the government officers, there’s around 60,000 people working at the airport. It is only enough to cope with the existing passenger demand,” he said.

“Our third runway will be in commission by the end of this year, so there will be more passengers and more flights to come.”

He said that the airport is currently lacking manpower in customer service, baggage handling, and aircraft maintenance.

Yiu added that the Labour Importation Scheme had helped fill the manpower gap during the past two peak travel seasons including Christmas and Lunar New Year.

He said around 1,800 work visas have already been approved, with 880 workers from the mainland working at the airport.

“The scheme will last for two years. [The imported workers] came in October so it’s been half a year now. We have been purposely approving applications in phases,” he said.

“There are currently around 2,000. We still have over a year’s worth of time for pushing each phase. As for when the next phase will be, the government will announce it soon.”