Originally Posted by brunos

BA sudden closing of its HK base is somewhat shocking (although it was widely expected in HK) and rightly led to emotional posts here.

But it might be useful to treat it in the HK context. The labour market is very flexible and fluid. There is basically no unemployment. A 2.8% jobless rate is below what economists rate as full employment. We are talking here about low-level workers and it is common for such workers to change company with a day notice (or whatever short period their contract require). Conversely companies lay off very flexibly. One does not need months to find a new job, and certainly not in the growing airline industry. The labour culture is just very different from that of "protective" Europe.
In May 2017, Cathay Pacific laid off with immediate effect 190 staff at its HQ without notice. Like in the BA HK case, one suspected that something was coming, but there was no notice for those affected staff.

As HongKonger, I am not shocked by this practice, and I have become accustomed to this culture and see it working well. To me, the big question is what is the ex gratia payment (redundancy package) on top of the legal requirements. CX staff were not unhappy about it and there was no protest or demonstration. Apparently, BA mistake was to be unclear about those ex gratia terms:
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...ffer-hong-kong

Frankly, there is no rational for keeping a HK base. BA is now down to two flights a day That made sense when BA had flights from SIN and HKG continuing to Australia many years ago, but now with two flights? Over the years HK has become very, very expensive and compensation for airline workers reflect that. As opposed to SIngapore, English skills have strongly declined in HK (while mandarin is on the rise) and are getting pretty poor among the kind of people recruited as FA (CX/KA FAs are increasingly less proficient in English). It is easy to find mandarin and cantonese speaking staff in London, and Europe-sourcing is the practice adopted by all European/American airlines. I also understand why BA needs to layoff with "immediate" effect for operational reasons. With a small crew (85) operating two daily flights, an airline can hardly give a six-month notice and see the FAs leaving progressively during the six-month period as they find a new job. Even in Europe, one can simply include the legal notice period as part (on top) of the severance package. That brings back the crucial issue of how large is the ex-gratia package offered by BA. So far we don't know.