Its rivals “have emerged leaner, fitter and eager to take customers away from us,” the company’s CE, Ronald Lam, said in a video message to employees in January, trying to rally them around a plan “to survive and thrive.” Cathay Pacific climbed back to 50% of its prepandemic flight capacity only in March. Today Cathay Pacific is still struggling to hire enough pilots, flight crew and other staffers to compete with other airlines. As the city lengthened the mandatory quarantines, some aircrew had to enter three- to four-week-long “closed loop” work shifts, enduring weeks away from home that were devastating to employee morale. It parked 70 unused planes in the desert in Alice Springs, Australia, and fired 5,300 employees based in Hong Kong. In 2020, as the pandemic grounded its business, Cathay shuttered its regional division, Cathay Dragon. The airline’s CE and chairman both resigned, and new leaders began cracking down on anything employees said or posted on social media that could anger China. Chinese officials threatened to bar crew members who joined the protests, or even voiced support for them, from flying into China.
Flights were canceled or delayed by airport sit-ins involving thousands of demonstrators, among them employees of the airline, Cathay Pacific. In 2019, when Hong Kong was convulsed by pro-democracy protests, Cathay Pacific was caught in the crossfire with Beijing.
And the pandemic wasn’t the start of Cathay’s troubles. Its business was decimated by some of the industry’s most expansive flight bans and quarantine requirements. Cathay Pacific fights to emerge from the long shadow of Covid Few major airlines in the world were hit by the Covid pandemic as hard as Cathay Pacific, the flagship carrier of Hong Kong, or have labored so mightily to recover from it.
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