Everything appeared perfectly routine when, a fortnight ago today, a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 touched down at Hong Kong International Airport after a flight from Bangkok. As its passengers and crew filed out across the air bridge, however, the airline's management could be forgiven for exhaling a long sigh of relief. Behind the cockpit door, flight CX751 had been no ordinary arrival. The man in the left-hand seat was former Aircrew Officers' Association (AOA) president Nigel Demery - arguably the biggest individual thorn in Cathay Pacific's side for the past decade - and the smooth landing on January 25 was his last after 20 turbulent years with the airline.
Mr Demery led the pilots' union through its stormy dispute over pay and rosters that led to the wholesale sacking of a group of pilots later to be known as the 49ers. And when the AOA decided three years ago to halt financial support for the sacked pilots and their court actions against Cathay, he left it and helped form a breakaway union to carry on the fight.
The battle he refused to abandon will reach its conclusion after eight years in Hong Kong's High Court next month, when an unfair dismissal action on behalf of the 18 remaining 49ers - who refused a settlement of either pay-offs or new job interviews - will be heard. But the bitter schisms and factions that the 2001 dispute created within the airline's pilot community and the union movement in Hong Kong are likely to continue to reverberate for years to come.
For some, Mr Demery is a divisive figure who led the union into a disastrous confrontation with management it could never hope to win, and is at least partly to blame for the subsequent decline in AOA membership and union muscle.
For others, he is a man of principle who was ready to risk his own career to stand by unfairly sacked colleagues.
The one thing no one would have expected the Briton - a former Royal Air Force pilot - to do is step into retirement quietly, and five days after that final flight, on the day of his official retirement, Mr Demery fulfilled those expectations by going to the Labour Tribunal to begin an action against Cathay Pacific over what he calls his 'forced retirement'.