HONG KONG: Cathay Pacific is poised to lose just about $200 million a month from February, the embattled Hong Kong provider reported the day gone by, as the town’s COVID-19 restrictions have observed shipment flights slashed. Hong Kong has maintained one of the global’s most harsh go back and forth restrictions, setting apart a town that was once as soon as {one of the} global’s biggest logistics and transportation hubs. Air workforce quarantine measures had been additional tightened following the invention that two COVID-positive Cathay group of workers had breached house quarantine-which resulted within the town’s first outbreak of the hyper-contagious Omicron variant.
By way of January, Cathay’s shipment flights-one of the few sectors the place the airline was once making cash-had decreased to twenty % of its pre-pandemic capability, whilst passenger flights dropped to 2 %, its CEO Augustus Tang stated the day gone by. “Consistent with our initial evaluate, we think those capability ranges to lead to an working coins burn of HK$1.0-1.5 billion ($128 – $193 million) monthly from February.” Tang’s forecast approach the losses for 2022 may outstrip closing 12 months’s overall consolidated lack of roughly HK$5.6 – 6.1 billion, in keeping with Cathay’s document.
Like maximum world carriers, Cathay has been hammered because the pandemic wipes out maximum world go back and forth. However the airline is particularly inclined as it has no home marketplace to fall again on, and is primarily based in a finance hub that has embraced mainland China’s “zero-COVID” plan. The airline flew some 717,000 passengers in 2021, Tang said-a a ways cry from the 35.2 million folks transported in 2019. Sturdy shipment call for was once what sustained the carrier-it flew 1.3 million heaps in 2021, in comparison to two million two years earlier than. The Cathay flight attendants who breached house quarantine measures withstand six months in prison if convicted.
Hong Kong chief Carrie Lam stated closing week that government had been investigating whether or not Cathay Pacific has complied with laws, and may face criminal motion. Chairman Patrick Healy argued {that a} “tiny minority” of rule-breakers must now not overshadow Cathay’s contributions to Hong Kong. In 2021, the airline’s workforce spent over 62,000 nights in quarantine motels, he stated, including that 1,000 in their group of workers had been subjected to greater than 11,000 nights within the Penny’s Bay govt quarantine camp. -AFP