Add Category
A spokesperson from Hong Kong’s flag carrier, Cathay Pacific, which has struggled to stay afloat over the past two years due to the absence of its biggest market, said the airline would “continue to communicate with relevant authorities and to increase our passenger capacity to and from the Chinese mainland as much as possible”.
Cathay Pacific is operating at about 30 per cent of its pre-pandemic capacity due to rampant staffing shortages and other operational constraints, including China’s closure.
Cathay has a couple of services a week scheduled in January from Hong Kong to cities in the mainland including Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Fuzhou. The current schedule slightly increases in February with an increase in services to Beijing, but it’s not clear when daily services will resume.
Cathay Pacific has lurched from the crisis of the 2019 pro-democracy protests that triggered a management overhaul, to the two-year pandemic that has crippled the carrier.Credit:Bloomberg
Singapore has replaced Hong Kong as the region’s biggest travel hub over the past two years. Singapore Airlines is targeting 80 per cent of its pre-COVID seat capacity by the end of the year but is not rushing to increase its services to China, saying in a statement it will “continue to monitor the demand for air travel and adjust capacity accordingly”.
Korean Air currently operates nine flights a week to seven cities in mainland China and will boost that to 15 flights to nine cities starting from next month, with the two additional cities being Shenzhen and Xiamen on top of Shenyang, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Dalian, Qingdao, Tianjin and Nanjing.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 290 of the world’s airlines, said China’s pre-departure COVID-19 tests need to be removed to ensure the industry can cope when travel from the most densely populated country recommences.
“It’s also crucial for the entire aviation value chain in China to be well-prepared and adequately resourced to handle the expected surge of air travellers, so as to avoid the travel disruptions and problems seen elsewhere in the world when borders reopened,” Xie Xingquan, IATA’s regional vice president for North Asia, said.
With Bloomberg