In the last few weeks, Cathay Pacific has announced that it will be further decreasing the number of international flight crew bases, some of which date back decades. Most recently, the Hong Kong flag carrier confirmed that all of its pilot bases in Australia would be closing over the coming months in an effort to cut costs at the airline.
Currently, the airline has crew bases in Australia’s five largest cities with 40 pilots based in Melbourne, 27 based in Sydney, 26 based in Brisbane and 15 in Perth, while a further 9 pilots are based in Adelaide. During pre-Covid times, these crew bases were used to service several daily inbound Cathay Pacific flights from Hong Kong, which served all of Australia’s major cities.
Up until 2019, Cathay Pacific even held a 4.5 per cent share of the Australian international airline market, making it the fourth-largest international carrier by market share servicing the Australian international travel market. However, since March 25th, 2020 when Australia made the decision to close its international borders to the world, passenger demand for Cathay Pacific’s Australian flights has practically fallen off a cliff.
As of March 2021, the airline has ceased flights to Adelaide altogether and operates only a few weekly cargo services to the remainder of its Australian destinations with a few additional weekly passenger flights servicing Brisbane, Sydney and Perth.
In comparison to 2019, the airline used to operate two daily flights to Brisbane, up to three daily flights to Melbourne and up to four daily flights to Sydney from Hong Kong, in addition to daily flights to Adelaide and Perth, as well as seasonal flights to Cairns.
Currently, the lack of flights to Australia is mainly due to an obvious lack of passenger demand for them which has continued to negatively impact Cathay Pacific’s Australian based pilots. In response to the recent announcement that the airline would be closing its Australian flight crew bases, Cathay Pacific Aircrew General Manager, Deborah McConnochie stated “the decision is not a reflection of the performance of our Australian pilot bases” and went on to apologise for not being able to find an alternative.
Cathay Pacific’s Australian based pilots will now face two options; a redundancy package from the airline or the option to relocate to Hong Kong to work in the airline’s main pilot base. However, the second option is looking less and less likely as mainland China looks to push out migrant workers in Hong Kong on working visas and replace them with local workers, particularly in the airline industry.
The announcement from Cathay Pacific that it will be closing its Australian pilot bases comes only weeks after the airline made its decision to close its Canadian pilot bases. The airline has also suggested that there may be a reduction in the number of crew bases in Europe, the USA and New Zealand.
It is looking increasing likely that Cathay Pacific is trying to consolidate its operations and operate from one single crew base in Hong Kong, moving away from international crews on higher salaries in comparison to their local counterparts in an effort to reduce costs at the airline.
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Source: https://aeronewsx.com/cathay-pacific-to-close-australian-crew-bases/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cathay-pacific-to-close-australian-crew-bases
