Air Hong Kong Limited was founded in 1986 by a group of businessmen operating out of Stansted airport in London with additional investment from Hong Kong. They commenced scheduled operations in 1989 with a Boeing 707-320C freighter. In the mid 90's they ran into finacial issues and were looking to make a deal with their aircraft leasor for a stake in the company when Cathay Pacific jumped in and bought a 75% stake in the company, keeping the operation running. Cathay Pacific also ran cargo operations out of Kai Tak and presumably thought that buying the competition at a bargann price made good sense. In 2002 Cathay Pacific bought the outstanding 25% stake of the company, so it was then a wholly owned subsidiary.Later in 2002 Cathay Pacific traded a 30% stake in the company to DHL for the right to handle their cargo operations in Asia, leading to the distnctive livery the aircraft wear today.

Air Hong Kong started out flying 707's, then traded up to 747's, which they intially flew out of Kai Tak then moved over to Chek Lap Kok when Kai Tak closed. They started out focused on a few long haul routes (to Brussels and Manchester, among other places) but later focused on Asian routes. Though they were flying 747's at the time Air Hong Kong was the launch customer for the Airbus A300-600RF freighter, the first of which was delivered in 2002. They traded in their 747's some time ago and now have an all Airbus A300 fleet.

Air Hong Kong began service flying to Europe and Dubai but focuesd their operations on Asia some years ago. At present The airline operates an express freight network to 13 destinations in nine countries, including China, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.