Fastjet

Air Canada's Hong Kong website will allow you to book pax service HKG - YVR return in May which suggests that they will fly you as long as you have the right documentation, whatever that may be.

tentseller

OR
They will sell you a ticket, cancel the flight, give you a credit and keep the money?

Master thread Air Canada Refunds vs credits; Class action lawsuit filed

brewdog11

Any word on when the Hong Kong International Airport will be open to transit passengers again? Have an upcoming trip that I would prefer to book on Cathay.

percysmith

No information as present.

brewdog11

And just a few months ago I was routinely taking the airport express into town on half-day layovers to relax and explore. Strange times we're in, indeed.

percysmith

I was in Cusco then Santiago last year. Watching live fire in the latter and the lockdown of the former is creepy.

I’m not sure of the merits of closing transit.
Stopping passengers from infecting HK crew might be good. A friend said an unexpected boon from closing transit was its easier to bring stranded HK family members home.
And few airlines/jurisdictions want to do it anymore - not even EK or SQ. Only BA, QR and JL (if you can get around the NRT/HND split) seem to be transit options.

But maybe we can reopen soon? I don’t work for the CHP tho, I don’t know what considerations they take in their assessments.

oldchinahand

@Fastjet

As will CX. My youngest son 14 is returning to HK from Toronto via Vancouver on this evenings CX flight.
Air Canada flights to HK are at present freight only according to there HK office.

Fastjet

Air Canada has suspended YYZ-HKG service, but continues 3 times weekly YVR-HKG carrying passengers. In fact there is an AC flight YVR-HKG today

https://www.aircanada.com/hk/en/aco/...0/farereview:0

brewdog11

Who could be flying that route when HK has shuttered borders to almost everyone and has stopped int'l transit? There can't be that many HK citizens to support demand for CX and AC pax flights.

ETA: I see that AC YVR-HKG flights are freight-only. That makes more sense.

tentseller

Very high load for CX YVR-HKG since school reopening was announced. There are many families split between Vancouver/Toronto and Hong Kong.

AC 777s had seats removed to do the TPAC cargo run. CX, under the same family as HEACO developed a cargo securing systems with the seats in place for maximum flexibility.

percysmith

This happened two days ago. Since we have a thing for referencing what UK/CA/AU/NZ does (see Pannick QC and Anthony Chan’s Friday opinion or any number of Thomas Au’s judgements), maybe CHP will start thinking about letting HK airside transits, too:

https://loyaltylobby.com/2020/05/14/...nsit-facility/

TomYoung

Singapore is starting transits from June 2. Meanwhile Hong Kong and Cathay appear to be frozen like an animal in a vehicle's headlights waiting for it to hit them. Others scrap fleets, send leased planes back to lessors, and old owned ones to the knackers or to be parked in low cost desert locations, raise capital, lay off staff and generally strive to survive. Cathay has only sold and leased back a handful of 777s. Maybe they are too busy trying to sort out their new hedging disaster.

cx4ever

But why? Singapore had 570 cases yesterday and 448 by noon today. I know very few cases are outside the foreign workers in dormitories but combining returning Singaporeans with transiting Americans, Pakistanis (which form the bulk of HK cases nowadays), British, and Indians doesn't seem wise. It's at least a few weeks too early imo. It probably won't happen but if Singapore reaches 50,000 cases by the end of June due to this they'll look like absolute idiots. Besides, how much demand is there for international travel nowadays if everyone needs to quarantine for two weeks?
Also, I think HKAA voided parking fees for aircraft for up to five months. SQ also cited fuel hedging mistakes as a reason why they made a loss in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, and they received an unnecessarily massive $13B USD loan. LH will get ~$7B, the big three US carriers each get ~$5B, and CX gets $30 million in subsidies based on fleet size, ~$180 million in advanced ticket sales and ~$250 million ($335 million split with HX), so around $0.65B USD. It takes money to decommission aircraft or to pay penalties to end leases early so this extra cash plus the $2.6B of unrestricted liquidity in March wouldn't be enough to justify these short-term costs for small longer-term gains.
I think it makes sense to sell a few more 77Ws. The extra few frames won't make any income for the next couple years and they could easily be replaced by the remaining 8 A350-1000s that have largely already been paid for. However, the planes will probably be worth more when the pandemic comes to a close instead of now (some airlines retiring the A380s and 744s that already operate the 77W could find these attractive) so they could be waiting maybe until the end of the year.

email2markt

With CX starting to ramp up services from 20th June, I had assumed this might be in response to some preferential information they had from the gvt regarding transit rules relaxing later next month, or alternatively the airport preparing for transit lanes.

Hoping it’s an educated decision or else i’m assuming we’ll see these flights cancelled again over the coming weeks

brunos

can expect LHR flights not to get more traffic,even for transit in HKG.