Jake's View | Haeco grounded by elite bank jobs that pay more
Despite its No 2 world ranking, the aircraft maintenance company's best days may be behind them with their labour shortages likely to worsen
A shortage of labour is limiting Hong Kong's position in the aircraft maintenance industry even though it is home to the world's No 2 service provider.
That No 2 ranking in the aircraft maintenance business is a little dubious. It is done on the basis of market capitalisation, which means that any contender must first be a separate listed company. Many are not. Total revenues or maintenance hours would be a better measure.
But Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company is still a company that has impressed me right from my investment analyst days when they used to offer us tours at Kai Tak once a year and showed how they had all the equipment to put together a Boeing 747 from the ground up.
Then there was the time that the late Vic Locke, commodore of the yacht club, ran his aluminium-built yacht, Bugis, across a rock somewhere near Port Shelter, and put a kink in it.
The boys at Haeco took it out of the water, put it on the rack, and, "pop", Bugis was all shipshape again. But to everything there is a season and it may just be that Haeco's best days are over, that it just doesn't make sense to have such a big maintenance centre here any longer.