Staff at Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong’s flagship airline, are on edge.
Their territory has been gripped by months of anti-government protests and their company is feeling the wrath of China’s aviation regulator after some staff members took part or expressed support.
Since an Aug. 9 directive by the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) that called for the suspension of staff who supported or participated in the demonstrations, the regulator has rejected some entire crew lists without explanation, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The rejections have forced Cathay to scramble, pulling pilots and flight attendants off standby while it investigates social media accounts in an effort to determine which crew member has been deemed a security threat, one of the sources said.
Other disruptions have come in the form of a huge jump in the number of plane inspections upon landing, four pilots said.
The flexing of regulatory muscle has contributed to a climate of fear within the airline, with employees telling reporters they felt Cathay’s longer-term future as an independent company was highly uncertain and subject to Beijing’s whims.
The CAAC’s labeling of employees who support the protest as a security risk and its demand that they be suspended from flying over mainland airspace has been a de facto career killer.
About three-quarters of Cathay flights use mainland airspace and due to the directive, 30 rank-and-file staff, including eight pilots and 18 flight attendants, have been fired or resigned under pressure, the Hong Kong Cabin Crew Federation said.
Cathay chief executive Rupert Hogg and his top deputy also resigned in August amid the mounting regulatory scrutiny on the 73-year-old airline, one of the region’s most high-profile brands that draws on Hong Kong’s British heritage.
“Things changed very quickly,” said pro-democracy Hong Kong Legislator Jeremy Tam (譚文豪), a pilot who resigned from the airline after the CAAC directive, likening the atmosphere to a political trial. “The threat is huge and it’s almost like zero to 100 in two seconds.”
Reuters talked to 14 current and former employees for this article. Nearly all declined to be identified for fear of being fired or due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The CAAC did not respond to requests for comment on the rejections of crew lists or the increase in plane checks.
Cathay said in a statement it must comply with all regulatory requirements.
“Quite simply, this is our license to operate; there is no ground for compromise,” it said.
The airline declined to comment on the number of employee departures, but said any terminations took into account factors such as a person’s ability to perform their role.
Aviation regulators around the world conduct occasional plane inspections at airports to ensure an airline is in compliance with safety regulations, but after the CAAC’s Aug. 9 directive, the once-infrequent inspections occurred almost daily, and included the new and unusual step of checking phones owned by the crew for anti-China photographs and messages, the pilots said, adding that this had led to flight delays.
The step-up in checks has increased the likelihood of regulators finding minor issues to write up, which pilots said had included dirt on the plane’s exterior and scratches on a fire extinguisher.
Infractions can have outsized consequences under the CAAC’s strict demerit points system, they said, noting the regulator could force Cathay to reduce its number of flights, cut destinations or, in a worst-case scenario, revoke the airline’s right to fly to China.
Management has urged staff to do their utmost to avoid infractions.
“It is nothing less than the survival of the airline at stake,” a senior employee said. “Management have made that abundantly clear at meetings.”
Executives are particularly sensitive after seven incidents outside mainland China in the past two months in which pre-flight checks found emergency oxygen bottles for crew were depleted.
The CAAC is more public than many regulatory peers about disclosing safety breaches, warnings and punishments.
In 2017, Emirates was banned from expanding its operations for six months following two safety incidents, while Air China Ltd was ordered last year to cut Boeing Co 737 flights by 10 percent after an emergency descent linked to a pilot smoking an e-cigarette in the cockpit.
Cathay declined to provide information on its points under the CAAC system, but said it wanted to emphasize that there had been no impact on its flight services into China.
The pilots said the high frequency of airplane checks, which one described as “very intimidatory,” was starting to recede.
Employees are also feeling pressure from other regulatory bodies.
Last week, ahead of National Day on Tuesday, Chinese immigration officers at some airports requested photographs of crew with the Chinese flag, said a pilot at regional arm Cathay Dragon, who flies to China regularly.
He said to his knowledge, most pilots — many of whom are expatriates from Western nations — had refused, but Hong Kong cabin crew were “too nervous to say no” given the scrutiny on their actions by the company and the Chinese government.
“Everyone is walking on eggshells in China,” the pilot said.
Cathay did not respond to a request for comment, while the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, which oversees immigration, did not respond to a request for comment.
There has been no letup in the widespread, sometimes violent, unrest that has beset Hong Kong. Triggered by a now-withdrawn extradition bill, it has morphed into an outpouring of opposition to the Beijing-backed government.
The crisis has also meant a sharp drop in travel demand to Hong Kong, putting more pressure on Cathay.
Cathay’s overall passenger numbers were down 11.3 percent in August. Flights at Cathay Dragon, which does most of Cathay’s flying to China, were on average 60 to 65 percent full last month, down from the usual 80 percent, according to estimates from two pilots.
The pilots said while the sharp drop in demand was in some ways similar in scale to that weathered by Cathay during the SARS epidemic and the global financial crisis, there were key differences that felt more threatening to the company’s future.
Some state-controlled firms such as China CITIC Bank International and Huarong International have told employees to avoid flying with Cathay, and it has been attacked by Chinese state news organizations, as well as by many Chinese consumers on social media.
The CAAC’s Aug. 9 statement which called staff who supported the protests a security risk has also put Cathay’s reputation as one of the world’s safest airlines under a cloud it does not deserve, employees said.
Many acknowledged the new management team, which oversees about 33,000 employees, has few palatable options in dealing with the situation given the sway Beijing holds over the airline’s operations, but they lamented the loss of freedom of speech and sense of job security, saying employees are afraid to speak about anything even vaguely political or voice support for protests on social media for fear of being reported by colleagues under a whistle-blower policy.
“It has become a Hong Kong company with mainland employment terms,” a pilot at Cathay Dragon said. “The risk is death by a thousand cuts.”
Additional reporting by Anne Marie Roantree, Clare Jim, David Stanway and Stella Qiu
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs