As Hong Kong eases Covid-19 rules, airlines race to find pilots and cabin crew, get parked aircraft flying again
- Cathay Pacific, major airlines start adding flights, but are held back by shortage of pilots, crew
- But when will mainland China reopen borders? That’s when Hong Kong will bounce back, experts say
Hong Kong aviation must get back quickly to at least half its pre-pandemic number of passenger flights to cope with an anticipated surge in demand, industry experts and observers said.
But the city’s status as a global aviation hub hinged on when it would remove all remaining pandemic travel restrictions and reopen borders fully with mainland China, they added.
Airlines have been eager to increase flights to Hong Kong since the city stopped requiring arriving travellers to undergo compulsory quarantine last month, but many operations cannot be rushed.
The carriers face major challenges in getting parked aircraft flying again, fixing shortages of pilots and cabin crew, and stepping up flight rescheduling and aircraft maintenance operations.
Hong Kong’s current air traffic is only about 16 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with 5,080 passenger flights in August, compared with about 30,000 flights in August 2019.
“Hong Kong needs to drastically increase its flight capacity to fully benefit from the lifting of coronavirus restrictions. It needs to do it quickly or travellers will go elsewhere,” said senior lecturer Andrew Yuen Chi-lok of Chinese University’s Aviation Policy and Research Centre
The Airport Authority is preparing to give away 500,000 airline tickets worth HK$2 billion (US$254 million) early next year in a global campaign to woo visitors, but Yuen said the city must increase its flight capacity to at least 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by then to meet the anticipated surge in demand.