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World business quick take

■Airlines
Dragonair wins flight rights
Dragonair got clearance to fly to five Asian cities now served by Cathay Pacific Airways, officials said yesterday, but Dragonair may put off launching any new services until it sees whether Cathay encroaches on its turf in mainland China. Cathay, Hong Kong's largest carrier, is a minority owner of Dragonair, but the two began competing recently on the lucrative Hong Kong-Taipei route. Before that, there was no overlap in their flights under an old rule that permitted just one carrier based in Hong Kong to serve any particular route. Dragonair won permission from Hong Kong regulators to fly from Hong Kong to Manila, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok and Sydney, but spokeswoman Bevis Yiu said the carrier would not immediately start serving any of those destinations. Yiu declined to elaborate.

■ Airlines
United plans to lay off pilots
United Airlines announced plans to lay off another 352 pilots over the next two months as part of its plan to decrease its flying schedule next year. The company said Tuesday that it will cut 220 pilots' jobs on Jan. 6 and another 132 on Feb. 7, reducing its current total of 8,600 pilots by an additional 4 percent. The actions will increase the number of pilots laid off to 1,196 from cost-saving measures the carrier announced last month, and 9,000 employees in all. United currently has about 83,000 employees. "This is a very difficult announcement to make because of the impact it will have on our employees and their families," said Steve Forte, United's senior vice president for flight operations.

■ Mobile phones
Motorola's China sales rise
Motorola Inc, the biggest overseas company in China, expects sales from the country to rise at least a 10th this year because it exported more cellphones and semiconductor chips, company China President Timothy Chen said. Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola had US$5 billion in sales from China last year, including both domestic sales and exports, the most of any foreign company in the country. The company's global sales were US$30 billion last year. "I'm looking for at least 10 percent growth this year," Chen said in an interview. "Next year, there's potential to grow too. One of the engines is coming from exports. We're using China as a worldwide manufacturing center."

■ Entertainment
Disney cuts earnings
Walt Disney Co cut by 21 percent its most recent quarterly earnings after determining the animated film Treasure Planet would make US$47 million less than it expected. Shares fell as much as 5.3 percent in after-hours trading. The second-biggest US entertainment company said federal regulators are investigating whether some of its outside directors aren't sufficiently independent. Disney, criticized by investors such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System for ties between directors and the company, said former US Senator George Mitchell was named presiding director. The shares have fallen 38 percent over the past four years. CEO Michael Eisner has "done very poorly over the last four years," said Scott Black, of Delphi Management Inc, which held 398,000 Disney shares as of Oct. 4. "You have to ask yourself if he can turn this thing around."

Agencies
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