I notice something particular.. when CX gets an aircraft stranded somewhere.. as in the case of the day with the hailstones..

http://news.yahoo.com/cathay-pacific...042555319.html

That people on board complain to high heaven and CX usually kowtows to them and compensate the passengers.

Whereas if its on say, Air Canada, or an american carrier, that everyone sits quietly on board and seem to understand that their cabin crew needs to book off and that safety is paramount. And that if such a thing happened as above, that the passengers know that they can't deplane because the airport has no passport control.. But yet, on CX, they seem to make a big deal out of it?

Why is this so?

Simple, it's pretty evident in the news article's title.

#becauseChina

And that's the kind of attitude that allowed US domestic carriers to keep pax stuck on a snowy tarmac for 8+ hours with no food, drink, or working toilets.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B142 Safari/8536.25)

These peeps should be blacklisted and shot. I was on cx507 that day and i got home 2 hrs late. Noone complained big time. Seriously, be glad you arrived hkg and not in chaina cuz u need a visa to get off the plane. And if you were from chaina, you should go back home when plabe diverts instead. Under custody.

Seriously, theres only so much everyone can do.

If someone dies on the plane for lack of blood circulation or any other malfunctionings with their body due to being seated for a prolonged period of time, these Chinese officials who forces everyone to be caged onboard the plane will become partial murderers

I agree with GB's opening post.

Not sure I even understand the last 2 posts.

Not much CX could do about it... clearly the issue is with Chinese regulations... Most countries allow pax to deplane and even give them temporary visas... Given the Geography of HKG, CX is limited in the event of last minute diversions, but this is why their choice in the event of tech stops is usually ICN, TPE OR MNL...

Given CX's ties with CNAC and being a PRC carrier, CX & KA should have made agreements with nearby major diversion airports (CAN, SZX, MFM and ZUH) for cases like these, such as holding pax in secured terminal area or the use of cross-border buses with Public Security Bureau escort to the Shenzhen Bay border (or HK-Macau-Zhuhai bridge in the future).

CX is not a PRC carrier and PRC is not known for flexibility at times like this

Now that's something new. Guess we time traveled back to before 1997 and CX uses VR-H registration instead of B-.

FYI, CNAC (Air China) and CX/Swire cross-holds each other at about 30% of equity. CAAC in turn controls CNAC since its an SOE entity.
Under the current political situation, when HK whines, mainland China usually will give-in in the form of cooperative agreements and concessions. The entire Pearl River Delta ATC arrangement is a good example of such agreement, basically HK FIR controls most of the outgoing international traffic in the PRD region. CX could put its PR team into good use by lobbying and influencing to form some sort of agreement with PRD airports on diversion handling, instead of spending all its resources on Rugby 7s.

When SQ held 49% of Virgin Atlantic, Virgin was still a UK carrier i.e. was not allowed home privileges in Singapore, and vice versa. Not sure how the politics are going to work out if CX squeaks, but my guess is that these occurrences are rare enough that it is not worthwhile for CX to expend its political capital. Much better to use whatever little leverage it has on getting more military air space opened and for KA to serve more ports.

To be fair, when a KA jet got diverted to SZX last week and then developed a mechanical problem, the Chinese authorities gave in and allowed passengers to deplane and go to HK by land.

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/ar...ed-storms.html

Why wouldn't the plane be diverted to CAN instead? Since CX flies to CAN, it would make sense that they have more resources to support the unexpected flights

CX & KA benefits from the fact that it straddles between the definition of being a domestic and also a foreign carrier due to HK being part of China. KA flights are **usually** spared from the horrific delays and congestion of mainland airports since it is regarded as a foreign carrier with priority.

If CX started being treated as a PRC carrier, then there would be outcries about "one country, two systems" being violated.

Don't think this has anything to do with the airport authority but rather immigration and customs. But those folks will never make an exception for an airline. Don't think this is unique to China either and also applies to other countries as well.