Crew quarantine ‘deals further blow to Cathay’

Cathay Pacific on Monday warned that its passenger and cargo services, as well as its finances, will be hit hard by quarantine rules for flight crew expected to take effect next month.

The government is planning to require airline flight crew to join most other arrivals in spending 14 days in hotels on arrival.

Cathay said it expects the rule to take effect next month and will have a “significant impact” on its business, reducing cargo capacity by a quarter and its already-diminished passenger capacity by 60 percent.

Ronald Lam, the airline’s chief customer and commercial officer, added the requirement will increase the airline’s monthly spending by HK$300 million to HK$400 million.

The struggling airline’s reserves are dropping by HK$1 billion to HK$1.5 billion a month.

“The new measure will have a significant impact on our ability to service our passenger and cargo markets,” Lam said.

“The actual extent of such impact is yet to be confirmed and will be affected by a number of factors, including the success of mitigation measures we are able to adopt, such as agile manpower resources management.”

It also reported passenger numbers last month were just 1 percent of what they were year on year, at about 40,000, because of the government’s ban on flights from UK and the implementation of a longer quarantine period.

Cathay took a government-led bailout last year and announced a major revamp by cutting thousands of jobs and scrapping its Dragon brand.