Exclusive | HK Express pilots face pay cuts, non-flying staff asked to take unpaid leave, as budget carrier battles to stay afloat
- Airline’s CEO reveals she and senior directors will take 15 per cent drop in pay
- Pilots facing up to 40 per cent loss in income in new take-it-or-leave-it contracts
Simon Wu, director of operations at HK Express, told pilots in an internal memo their salaries would be reduced by 25 to 40 per cent when they were not flying, and by “an estimated” 8 to 14 per cent if average flight times were 70 hours monthly.
In appealing for employees to help out, Mandy Ng Kit-man, the airline’s CEO, told staff in the memo that the carrier still had a long way to go, “with many challenges ahead of us, and regrettably, what we have done so far is not enough to secure our future”.
She added: “This is not something I ask from you lightly. The past year has been a real test of our resilience.”
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Ng said she would take a 15 per cent pay cut through 2021, while senior directors would take a reduction of the same amount for the first six months of next year.