HONG KONG, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- More than 100,000 passengers were affected at Hong Kong International Airport on Friday due to flights disruptions on Thursday following typhoon Prapiroon, leaving one of the world's busiest airports in chaos.

    By 21:00 Friday, 445 flights were delayed because of the congested airspace at the airport, 62 flights were canceled while 642 flights had flown out of or arrived in Hong Kong, according to Hong Kong Airport Authority.

    Flight operation was resumed in Hong Kong International Airport on Friday morning, but long lines formed by passengers who were anxious to leave soon filled the airport lounge.

    Some passengers complained that they had to wait for four to five hours to check in and it was difficult to find the boarding gate since it was not printed on the boarding card.

    Ground personnel also said they felt very tired after working all night to provide water, food, blankets or accommodation for stranded passengers.

    To speed up the clearance of the congestion at the airport, the Hong Kong Airport Authority had arranged a flight every two minutes.

    Colman Ng Shung-ching,  Assistant Director-General of Civil Aviation Department, said such arrangement was in line with international standards and the safety of aircraft departure or landing must be ensured.

    "The Civil Aviation Department has mobilized all the personnel and mechanism of the air traffic control sector to ensure the smooth and safe proceeding of flight departures or landings," Ng said.

    Over 600 flights were canceled or delayed at the airport on Thursday, the largest number of flight disruptions since the new airport began operation in 1998.

    Cathay Pacific Airways, which operates most of the flights at the airport, once again apologized for the flight disruptions and announced on Friday that some 12,000 of its passengers were affected by the flight disruptions on Thursday.

    "Our company's staff will continue to work at full stretch until all of the remaining passengers have been accommodated,"said Carolyn Leung, Communications Manager of Cathay Pacific and also its spokeswoman.

    "It is difficult to say how long this may take but our first priority is to clear the backlog of passengers as quickly as possible," said the spokeswoman.

    Cathay Pacific had arranged eight extra flights on Friday to fly stranded passengers to Bangkok, Taipei, Denpasar, Incheon, Frankfurt and Vancouver.

    "Our company is operating at virtually full capacity because of the summer holiday peak season," Cathay Pacific's spokeswoman said.

    The airline also deployed additional aircraft and crew in an attempt to clear the backlog of passengers who were stranded as a result of bad weather. Cathay Pacific offered 650 hotel rooms for these stranded passengers on Thursday.

    The Hong Kong Airport Authority advised passengers to confirm the latest flight information with their airlines before departing for the airport.

    Typhoon Prapiroon on Thursday night made its landfall into west parts of southern China's Guangdong Province, some 300 km west of Hong Kong, pounding powerful winds and downpour and disrupting air and sea traffics in Hong Kong.

    Several people were injured by falling containers or billboards due to strong gales whipping over Hong Kong, where more than 600trees were uprooted or snapped during Prapiroon's rage.

    The Hong Kong Observatory removed the warning of all tropical cyclone signal at 15:00 Friday as Typhoon Prapiroon had weakened to a tropical storm on Friday after swirling into southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

    Compared with Hong Kong's minor damages, the casualty brought by Typhoon Prapiroon were more severe in the Chinese mainland, where at least 18 people were killed and tens of thousands of people were evacuated in Guangdong and Guangxi. Enditem