Typhoon Bavi cancelled 208 Hong Kong flights without a single signal in Hong Kong β what our data shows
July 24, 2026
On Saturday 11 July, Hong Kong's weather was unremarkable. No signal was hoisted; the Observatory's warnings pointed at southern Zhejiang and northern Fujian, a few hundred kilometres away. And yet 135 flights at Hong Kong International Airport were cancelled that day β about one departure or arrival in seven β because Super Typhoon Bavi was tearing past Taiwan toward East China.
We archive every HKG passenger flight from official Airport Authority data, permanently. This is what the storm actually did, day by day β and what it teaches about typhoon risk that no insurance brochure mentions.
The event, in official numbers
| Date | Flights | Cancelled | Delayed β₯1h |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 9 Jul | 875 | 0 | 45 |
| Fri 10 Jul | 891 | 27 | 38 |
| Sat 11 Jul | 895 | 135 | 66 |
| Sun 12 Jul | 900 | 46 | 74 |
| Mon 13 Jul | 895 | 3 | 26 |
(Press reports that Saturday cited the airport's tally of 64 inbound and 71 outbound cancellations β the same 135 flights sitting in our archive.)
Three days, 208 cancellations, and by Monday the airport was cleaner than a normal day. On a typical day in our 89-day baseline, HKG cancels just 2 flights.
Where the cancellations actually went
Taipei alone lost 90 legs over the three days. Add Kaohsiung (24) and Taichung (6) and Taiwan absorbed 58% of the damage; Shanghai Pudong (38), Hangzhou (16), Ningbo, Fuzhou and Wenzhou took most of the rest. A handful of Okinawa and Kansai flights rounded it out. By airline the split simply mirrors who flies those routes most: Cathay Pacific cancelled 89 legs, HK Express and EVA Air 22 each, Hong Kong Airlines and China Airlines 16 each.
The lesson: destination typhoons cancel, they don't delay
Look at the delay column again. On the worst day in three months, flights delayed over an hour barely doubled against the median (66 vs a typical 30) β while cancellations went up 67-fold. When a typhoon sits over your destination rather than over Hong Kong, airlines don't run late; they pre-emptively cut the schedule, often a full day ahead. Your risk is binary: your flight either operates roughly on time, or it doesn't exist.
That has two practical consequences:
- Watch the destination's warnings, not just the Observatory's. Bavi never brought a signal to Hong Kong. If your trip is to Taiwan, Japan or coastal China between July and October, the storm that kills your flight will usually be on their map, not ours.
- Move at the first cancellation wave, not the last. The 27 cancellations on Friday were the warning shot; by Saturday morning the fee-free rebooking queues covered 135 flights' worth of passengers. In a schedule cut, the earliest rebookers get the seats β your rights and the rebooking mechanics are here.
The recovery benchmark
From the 135-cancellation peak, HKG was back to single-digit cancellations within roughly 36 hours, with no lingering backlog by Monday. That's now our first archived recovery curve β every future storm will be measured against it, on the live typhoon tracker, which compares today's cancellations and delays against the typical-day baseline in real time.
One more thing the data settles: cancelled-by-typhoon is exactly the scenario where travel insurance bought early pays and insurance bought after the storm is named pays nothing. Bavi was named days before the first HKG cancellation. The window to be covered was there β for people who bought when they booked.