Originally Posted by
TomYoung
One needs to analyse Cathay's announcements carefully, not read them through rose tinted spectacles. When they talk of getting back to 100% of 2019 capacity they elsewhere explain that they mean that Cathay Pacific group, including Hong Kong Express, will be back to 2019 capacity, which I think means measured in ASK. That does not mean that all Cathay Pacific alone routes flown in 2019 will be flown with the same frequency. They have said that some will never be flown. I have read elsewhere that Hong Kong Express was already at 100% of its 2019 capacity a couple of months ago. In July Cathay said it (the group) was close to 60% of 2019 capacity. With Hong Kong Express already at 100%, that is a way off nearly 70% for Cathay Pacific airline alone. They also spoke of having a near 90% load factor. In July it was 89.3%, truly near 90%. It was also 87.6% YTD. . Both are high figures but saying going from 90s to 80s is not a reasonable description.
As for quality of management, Swire was running the show when it lost over USD 2.5Billion on foolish fuel hedging. I always think of that as they could have purchased a fleet of aircraft, parked them in the dessert and forgotten about them instead. They already had a fuel clause to give them protection. They could have restricted their hedging to the fuel related to tickets sold with the price fixed. But no, they chose to go out 4 years into the future, clearly speculating on making a profit whatever they say. Yet there was never mention of culpability. No heads rolled. That can never be forgotten. Neither can the money wasted on changing Dragonair and its fleet to Cathay Dragon, then firing everyone, transferring the aircraft back to Cathay Pacific and shutting it down. Yes, they have made wiser decisions, such as never buying A380s, but I doubt that, apart from possibly Swire Property they will ever be considered to be a model to be followed.
Now that Dragonair pilots are being rehired they need to be requalified. They are all Airbus trained. Many of the senior pilots who left were Boeing qualified. To get from a rusty airbus pilot to a 777 captain is a long road. Recently I sat next to a pilot who had run out of time due to weather delays and was being ferried back to Hong Kong. I found two of his comments particularly interesting. (1) We are being ferried back in several flights because there are not enough seats (no doubt including jump seats) on one flight. (2) We have two captains flying the plane because one is a training captain. Nearly everyone is getting a promotion.
As
Not so. After the closure of Dragon Air it was always planned and mentioned in Cathay reports and media that HKX would take over some routes and expand as a business and new aircraft were ordered for this purpose.
There is always movement and change in routes flown at any airline (HKX gave up the the Singapore route 2 months back ) and other than Dublin - that ceased prior covid I am not aware of any long haul routes that have closed but I do hear that new routes will be announced prior year end.
It is not rather grasping at straws to mention a fuel hedging of 6 years ago to make your point presumably that Swire is not a successful conglomerate when of course facts have proved otherwise for the past 70 year's +
As I understand from board reports at the time it was an outside Singaporean consultancy that made the costly hedging error . I read at the time that were also previously used by Singapore Airlines and presumably with better results !