Originally Posted by
hkskyline
Lots of air traffic control restrictions along that busy airspace. It's not a straight line heading out, and not a straight line heading in. A lot of time will be spent lining up for approach.
Exactly. HK and Mainland China still can't handoff planes below 15 kft. Going into HK, the handoff is over Zhuhai, so planes have to somehow fly 80-100 km too lose that 15 kft by going going deep into the South China Sea. Out of HK, you zig-zag a bit less to get to 15 kft over Lowu/Luohu. All this wasting of fuel is just on the HK side. Wouldn't be a wasteful thing over Mainland airspace--unless you're talking about CAN.