Don’t boycott Cathay Pacific, tens of thousands of Hong Kong jobs are at stake
- Cathay Pacific is a Hong Kong airline doing what needs to be done to save local jobs
- It is hardly the only airline to have agreed to mainland China’s political demands
I respectfully disagree with the call to boycott Cathay Pacific favoured by Eric Edwin Taylor (“Cathay Pacific’s capitulation to Beijing over the Hong Kong protests lets down employees and customers”, August 27).
First, Cathay Pacific is doing what it needs to do to save its 27,000 employees from financial ruin and a storied airline from bankruptcy. That is the definition of sound and responsible management to anyone in the world of business. Boycotting it will only further hurt Hong Kong’s native airline which employs tens of thousands of Hongkongers.
In its annual report, the company reiterates that Hong Kong is its focus and that it “has been deeply committed to its home base over the last seven decades and remains so, making substantial investments to develop Hong Kong as one of the world’s leading international aviation centres”. It is not a foreign company which can afford to shut up shop and go elsewhere.
Second, the protests have greatly impacted Cathay’s business. Cathay Pacific chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam said the company anticipated “a much more significant impact to our revenue in August and onwards. Traffic into Hong Kong, both business and leisure, has weakened substantially and we’ve also now seen ex-Hong Kong traffic starting to soften”.
The trade war with the United States is already having an impact on Cathay’s lucrative cargo business. More importantly, 70 per cent of Cathay Pacific flights pass through Chinese airspace. Airlines like Delta, American, Qatar and Singapore Airlines – none of which is headquartered in Hong Kong or has a significant number of routes over Chinese airspace – have already capitulated to China’s demands regarding Taiwan. What would you have Cathay Pacific do?
Anuradha Singh, Mid-Levels