It's a multitude of factors both attributable to airlines and the airport itself.

The airport and its services companies are short on workers. Many left the industry during COVID and are not necessarily coming back now that there is a recovery. There have been some rumblings that some airlines cannot come back because the service companies at HKG cannot support them.

Cathay lost many pilots and as regional competitors started recovering much earlier than Hong Kong, naturally the experienced folks gravitate to them and won't come back. It doesn't help Cathay has demoted a lot of them and those experienced crew that are on the ranks are disgruntled they can't get back to their pre-pandemic ranks/pay. The airline itself is also experiencing a labour shortage and can't ramp up back to normal levels for a while.

There was an article today on the SCMP where a Qatar Airways official predicted fares will stay high for the coming year but the reason comes from huge demand. I think long-haul prices are indeed still super expensive but for short-haul (other than Japan), prices have pretty much gone back to normal. I recently flew to Shanghai on MU for HKD1320 before tax, which was a steal before the pandemic already, and HK Express has launched a few decent specials to Vietnam and Korea of late.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...ways-executive