Passengers on dominant Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd faced more delays and disruptions on Monday as a pilots' work-to-rule in a pay and rostering dispute entered its seventh day.
"I need to go back to work" said a frustrated woman from Taiwan who had been forced to stay an extra night in Hong Kong.
With no sign of either side backing down, a growing number of politicians and newspapers urged the government to step in before the dispute wreaks more havoc on the busy summer tourist season.
PHOTO: AP
"What the government can do is to try to mediate and bring them back to the negotiating table," legislator Selina Chow, who heads the Hong Kong Tourism Board, told local radio station RTHK.
"The entire reputation and economic state of Hong Kong is in the hands of the two parties which are refusing to talk."
In the latest blow to tourism, a group from New Zealand cancelled a conference because Cathay could not guarantee flights into the territory, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Tourism Board told Reuters.
Cathay, Asia's fourth largest airline, said 39 of 122 Monday flights were cancelled by late morning due to the action by the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers' Association, which represents more than 85 percent of Cathay's 1,400 pilots.
Forty-one of 129 flights were cancelled on Sunday and the airline temporarily halted all flights to about 10 destinations.
The work-to-rule, with pilots sticking to the letter of their obligations, began last Tuesday and has forced the airline to cut flights by 20 percent and charter 15 costly aircraft and crew.
A wide-bodied aircraft and crew is estimated to cost US$1.65 million to US$1.8 million a month.
The airline says more pilots also were calling in sick, but the union denies escalating its action. Cathay handles about a third of all passenger and cargo passing through Hong Kong.
Chaos broke out at the weekend as the aftermath of killer Typhoon Utor and the labor row left thousands of passengers stranded for hours at Hong Kong airport.
There were fewer frayed tempers on Monday as the backlog was cleared. Queues returned to normal lengths with passengers apparently checking on delays before leaving for the airport.
But many of Cathay's passengers were clearly unhappy.
"They called me to say all their pilots were sick and they arranged an earlier flight for me. But now I have to wait in Singapore for five hours before getting a connecting flight to Penang [Malaysia]," one angry woman told Cable TV.
Newspapers and politicians unleashed an avalanche of calls for the government to act to end the dispute.
"The government should bring both sides to the negotiating table," an editorial in the mass circulation Apple Daily said.
The dispute has been simmering since a two-week pilot "sick out" in 1999 failed to stop Cathay from imposing a series of pay cuts, citing the devastating effect of Asia's financial crisis on the airline's passenger and cargo traffic.
Cathay hired more than 30 charters to keep passenger services going, costing a hefty HK$500 million (US$64 million).
Talks between the pilots and Cathay broke down on June 28 and both sides have refused to return to the table. Cathay rescinded a 10 to 15 percent pay rise offer and imposed a third and final pay cut on senior pilots.
Many pilots have been particularly peeved because after the airline's dismal 1999 results, it posted a record profit of HK$5 billion (US$641 million) in 2000.
Some of Cathay's top pilots are among the highest paid in the world, with a senior captain on expatriate terms getting more than US$450,000 a year.
But the pilots' union says only a small number of pilots get such sky-high salaries and most are well below that.
Hong Kong air cargo terminals said on Monday the delays and cancellations at Cathay had had little impact on operations.
Cathay shares ended the Monday morning session 2.86 percent down at HK$10.20. They are down 29 percent this year, compared to a fall of 16.46 percent for the blue chip Hang Seng Index.
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