“This is our commitment to Hong Kong and making sure that the Hong Kong aviation hub will be ready and will be competitive and remain a key aviation hub in the world,” Tang said.

With Cathay having no domestic network, reopening the border for quarantine-free travel is crucial to its business. Tang said this was also key for Hong Kong’s future as an aviation hub.

“We are at a different pace [compared with] other cities. Hong Kong is opening up and we are very much encouraged by the recent adjustment by the Hong Kong government, in terms of the travel restrictions and crew quarantines,” he said.

“So, the direction of travel is there and we would like to see [it] much more accelerated as well.”

Cathay Pacific expecting smaller losses in first half of 2022

Hong Kong has relaxed travel rules by halving hotel quarantine for arrivals to seven days and allowing visitors to enter the city, as well as adjusting its flight suspension mechanism for airlines that bring in infected people.

Tang said as the airline had “sufficient pilots and cabin crew” for current operations and for “a lot more capacity”, the recruitment drive was looking ahead to the next 18 to 24 months.

While international travel is recovering around the world, mainland China and Hong Kong are sticking with a “dynamic-zero Covid” policy, where various measures are employed with the aim of swiftly stamping out new outbreaks.

Once quarantine-free travel is allowed, Tang said, it will still take Hong Kong “a few months” to recover.

Cathay’s passenger flight capacity is 4 per cent of pre-pandemic levels while cargo capacity is about 34 per cent.

Regional rival Singapore Airlines said it aimed to recruit about 2,000 cabin crew in 2022, after a two-year hiatus to replace staff who left. It has no plans to hire pilots.

“Since the restart of our cabin crew recruitment drive in March this year, we have selected over 800 applicants to date. Of these, around 60 per cent are returning crew,” a spokeswoman said.

The airline and low-cost sister carrier Scoot fly to 97 destinations, with parent Singapore Airlines Group aiming to reach 67 per cent of pre-pandemic passenger capacity by the second quarter.

‘Revenge travel’: Singapore airfares up 27 per cent on pre-pandemic levels

Cathay Pacific shed a record 5,900 jobs in October 2020 when it axed regional airline Cathay Dragon and imposed a range of permanent and temporary staffing cuts in the first half of 2021, further reducing its workforce by 2,500.

The company has seen its workforce shrink 37 per cent from 2019 to the end of 2021. At the end of last year, Cathay Pacific and its subsidiaries employed more than 21,600 people worldwide, including about 17,700 in Hong Kong.

In its 2021 sustainability report, Cathay said the number of permanent employees who had voluntarily left the company had increased to 17 per cent. In 2020, the figure was 9 per cent.

Admitting turnover was relatively higher than average, Tang insisted the response to the recruitment drive had been positive, and the airline was giving priority to former staff who had been previously laid off.

A number of airlines in North America and Europe have struggled with pent-up passenger demand and some that had laid off workers have struggled to hire back staff quickly enough. Tang said Cathay hoped to learn from such mistakes by making sure it had enough time to train staff and get equipment ready.

The carrier resumed its cadet pilot programme in April as part of a new collaboration with Polytechnic University with the aim of training more than 280 locals this year and more than 1,000 by 2025.

It began recruiting more local pilots last summer. It said it had added 200 pilots for Cathay Pacific, with a total of 300 across the group’s airlines.

Hong Kong government extends HK$7.8 billion loan to Cathay Pacific for 1 more year

Tang said the airline was also now hiring “direct entry” pilots in Hong Kong and would be recruiting overseas as well.

The airline is also hoping to rebuild its network. On Tuesday, it said it was on track to double the number of destinations, from 29 at the start of the year. As of June, it said, it had reached its target of flying to 45 destinations. Before the pandemic, it flew to 108 destinations.

Independent aviation analyst Brendan Sobie said he believed the recruitment drive reflected Cathay’s confidence that there would be no permanent damage from the city’s slow reopening compared with other hubs, and signalled to local competitors it would maintain its slots and market share.

“Compared to some foreign competitors the ramp-up is slower as it will not be until end-2023 that Cathay reaches the new projected staff levels, but this is not surprising and is sensible given where Hong Kong is at the moment,” he said.