Hong Kong flag carrier, Cathay Pacific is another international airline that has provided an important service for Australian’s by providing vital connections to worldwide destinations from every major Australian city through its transfer hub at Hong Kong International Airport (HKG). However, yesterday on February 11th, 2021, Cathay Pacific announced that it would be temporarily pulling out of all but one of its Australian routes citing new stricter quarantine requirements for the airline’s flight crews returning to Hong Kong, which have been implemented to stop the spread of different COVID-19 strains in Hong Kong.
The new rules imposed by the Hong Kong SAR Government make it extremely difficult for Cathay Pacific, a well recognised international airline to continue operating. The new rules require all pilots and cabin crew returning from international duties to undertake 14 days of mandatory hotel quarantine, plus 7 days of medical observation. As a result, Cathay Pacific has cancelled most of its routes, leaving what are know as trunk routes in the aviation industry, with cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Toronto and Singapore remaining on the schedule, albeit at lower frequencies.
Throughout the course of the pandemic, Cathay Pacific has found it particularly difficult to maintain a profitable business with Hong Kong’s international borders effectively closed to the outside world. The airline has been forced to take other drastic measures such as grounding two-fifths of its fleet, roughly a total of 72 aircraft, a move which Cathay states will ensure “it can survive the pandemic and thrive in the future.”
Despite being a key market for Cathay Pacific pre-Covid and long regarded as the “unofficial flag carrier of Australia,” only one of the airline’s Australian routes has remained in Thursday’s schedule cuts. This means that from February 20th, Cathay Pacific will “indefinitely” suspend passenger flights between Hong Kong and the Australian cities of Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Previously each of these routes played a vital role in ensuring Australian citizens were able to return home from abroad during the pandemic. Cathay Pacific’s flights between Adelaide (ADL) and Hong Kong (HKG) were already suspended and have been since early 2020. The network cuts, mean that Cathay Pacific’s five-times-weekly service between Hong Kong (HKG) and Sydney (SYD), which is operated by the Airbus A350-1000 will be the carrier’s only remaining route to the Australian continent.
In a press release, Chief Operating Officier at Cathay Pacific, Ronald Lam said the mass axing of international routes was necessary “because the new measures will have a significant impact on our ability to serve our passenger and cargo markets.” The Hong Kong Government is due to review the new, stricter measures on the 22nd of February 2021 while Cathay Pacific has stated that the airline is looking to have the resources in place, in order to return to its current, but significantly reduced schedule in March 2021.
