Singapore_Air

Would this really be a bad thing ?

Cambo

When you are the China government, that would be great. Have the country isolated from the ROW for another 5 years, would greatly reduce the political critics you get from the international world.

For all Chinese people (except the upper top brass of the China government), Hong Kong people (except, etc), by far the majority of China/HK companies as well as CX, the continued 5 years isolation does sound pretty bad. I do have my doubts, CX would survive this, without spreading their business to other hubs in Asia.

JW95

I complete second and echo the comments made by Cambo on this. It is all too easy for people to hurl criticism at CX, and to an extent, I do understand the frustration RE. their scheduling and cancellations. However, I think it is a very fair point to make that Cathay have faced, and continue to face significantly more pressure in a way far greater than competitors such as SQ, MH, QR and EK have since this mess first began in 2020. This has only been reaffirmed by this Zero Covid approach, which has been a direct contributor to many of the route suspensions and cancellations highlighted in this thread, in addition to frequent cancellations on remaining routes. I am sure CX is doing all it can to re-establish its network and frequencies to what we had pre-Covid, but sadly many of the operational challenges RE. existing Covid strategy in HKG are beyond Cathay's control.

nomadabroad

Then don’t sell tickets you know for sure won’t operate, easy as that.

We are talking about flights months and months in advance here so they shouldn’t be deliberately over-selling flights given the uncertainties of their own scheduling + operating climate, and then zeroing out many flights and not cancelling/informing passengers accordingly.

As an example just until recently they were selling tickets ex-LHR on an overly ambitious 3x daily schedule this fall which has been suddenly trimmed back to 1x daily, so as you can imagine lots of chaos ex-UK at the moment for flights this Fall esp. for connecting flights. They shouldn’t even be putting those 3x daily flights to sale in the first place given the current circumstances but they did it anyway and those poor souls at the contact centres now have the deal with all these cancellations….let alone passengers who will then vow to never fly with CX again.

percysmith

They have the planes, they have the landing slots, arguably they have the crew (or may be able to recall), what they don’t have is a set in stone date by Government to open up.

And Government keeps saying “soon”. But don’t do so on the slightest excuse.

So are you going to HK Customs and charge CX with Wrongly Accepting Payment?

nomadabroad

Nope I’ll just take my money elsewhere and stop flying CX for the foreseeable future. You can keep flying with them though, so good luck.

And btw I was referring to connecting traffic so not really connected to opening up etc the least they can do is maintain consistent scheduling to at least allow for bare minimum connecting traffic to work - which they have managed to fail.

Have an amazing day.

JW95

And that right there, sadly underpins CX's operational problems at present. I fear that until Government commit to a definitive re-opening date just as SIN, DXB et al. have done, the operational uncertainties at CX RE. last minute cancellations will probably continue for some time. I too am desperately sad about the situation Cathay is in, and long for the airline to return to what it was, including its network, pre-pandemic, but with things being so fluid, so much of this is still beyond Cathay's control.

percysmith

WTP: zaijian

CX HK

Let me turn it around and ask: in what sense would this be a good thing?

percysmith

Well remember the Speech From The Throne yesterday gave our local priorities (whether we like it or not) as "better lives, bigger homes, more business start-up opportunities, better education for their children and better elderly care" https://english.cctv.com/2022/07/02/...k9220702.shtml . I don't see where reopening borders fit into this, esp the last and argurably the last two objectives.

We've also been asked to ""respect and support the country’s system", which, he spelled out, involved socialism under the party’s leadership" https://www.economist.com/china/2022...n-in-hong-kong . That includes Covid Zero/Dynamic Zero/Social Zero until China's own mRNA is sufficiently deployed.