HONG KONG – Hong Kong’s flagship airline, Cathay Pacific, has cancelled more than 80 flights since Christmas Eve, sparking concerns among customers on the possibility of further disruptions.

Questions have also been raised over whether the carrier is facing deep-seated problems.

Cathay Pacific cancelled at least 42 flights that were scheduled to fly between Hong Kong and Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Melbourne, Delhi and Dhaka, as well as Dubai, in the week of Dec 31, 2023, to Jan 6, according to its website.

It had earlier already axed at least 40 other flights, including long-haul ones to London and Amsterdam, in the final week of December.

In response to queries by The Straits Times, Cathay Pacific said in a statement that it chose to “proactively cancel a small number of flights in order to ensure the successful delivery of our overall services” amid “a marked increase in the number of flights operated over the holiday peak season”.

It apologised to affected passengers and assured the public that its operations remained “normal overall”.

The airline had earlier attributed the cancellations to “higher-than-anticipated pilot absence caused by seasonal illness on certain days in December”, according to local media reports.

Mr Paul Weatherilt, a Cathay pilot and chairman of its pilots’ union, the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association, pointed to a deeper-seated issue of a dire pilot shortage that could be traced back to the organisation’s staffing strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“During Covid-19, Cathay made a very strange choice,” Mr Weatherilt told ST. “They could have made other choices like putting staff on sabbatical... But they decided to make just under 1,000 out of its then around 4,000 pilots redundant.”

He added that another nearly 1,000 pilots also resigned for reasons such as low morale and better pay elsewhere.

During the pandemic, Cathay implemented Hong Kong’s biggest mass layoff in 30 years, killing off its regional carrier Cathay Dragon and letting go of a third of its staff. Since the city reopened its borders at the end of 2022, the airline has been aggressively rehiring pilots and other employees.

“We are turning on all the taps to recruit people to support our rebuilding journey,” Cathay said in its statement to ST. “We plan to recruit more than 800 cadet pilots in 2023 and 2024 combined. This includes recruiting cadet pilots from the Chinese mainland for the very first time.”

Mr Weatherilt said the carrier had added about 600 more trained pilots to its strength after the restructuring, “but it’s still a big shortfall”. He explained that it takes as many as seven to 10 years to train a cadet pilot to attain the full qualifications required to independently pilot a plane.

Cathay cadets take just one year to become second officers, who are like apprentice pilots. But they have to attain higher ranks – first officer and captain – to qualify as one of the two full pilots required to operate a plane under the carrier’s regulations, according to Mr Weatherilt. The requirements also include accumulating sufficient hours of flying experience.

“It’s one thing to recruit cadets, but the training takes seven, eight years to implement, and becoming a captain is up to 10 years away... so they (Cathay’s management) have really put themselves in a corner,” Mr Weatherilt said.

“Cathay is not short of cadets... It is short of captains and first officers, particularly on the passenger fleet, which has only 52 per cent of its pre-pandemic number of these pilots,” he added. “There are still many former Cathay pilots out there who could be re-employed, which would greatly reduce the training required.”

Cathay’s director of flight operations, Mr Chris Kempis, wrote in a recent memo that many pilots had reached or were at their 12-month limit on flying hours, contributing to the pilot shortage, Bloomberg reported. The pilots have a cap of 900 block hours on a rolling 12-month basis.

Cathay has said it aims to have its passenger flight capacity back at 100 per cent of its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2024. In October 2023, it said it was on track to reach 70 per cent of this capacity by the end of that year.

But Mr Weatherilt cast doubt on the 2024 goal, referring to the figure as an “impossible commitment” after the “strategic blunder” of the carrier’s Covid-era restructuring policy.

As at December 2023, Cathay had 2,532 pilots of all ranks serving both commercial and cargo fleets, compared with 3,885 in the final quarter of 2019, according to its pilots’ union.

While the airline runs about 500 pilot training courses a year now, Mr Weatherilt estimated that it would take 2,000, or about four years’ worth of such courses, to meet its current staffing needs.

“This doesn’t even account for the extra capacity that will be needed for the third runway and new aircraft orders,” he said.

Hong Kong’s third runway – which is designed to handle an additional 30 million passengers a year – officially opened in late 2022. Its construction is set for full completion in 2024.

“Cathay’s recovery will be a multi-year project, and Hong Kong is going to find it very difficult to recover its place in aviation,” Mr Weatherilt said. “The Cathay management’s decisions... have had an adverse impact, not just on Hong Kong as an aviation hub, but also on shareholders.”

Mr Brendan Sobie, founder of Singapore-based aviation consulting and analysis firm Sobie Aviation, was more sanguine.

“Cathay has been hiring and training to support its plan (of fully restoring flight capacity),” Mr Sobie told ST, adding that the industry typically required long lead times for such endeavours.

“Just because they had a shortage of available staff the last couple of weeks doesn’t mean anything about the new staff that are expected to come on board this year,” he said.

“Both Cathay and Hong Kong overall ended 2023 on the track they said they would be on. I would not assume (that its recent flight cancellations) could result in any kind of derailment in 2024.”

Cathay customers, however, remained concerned about the possibility of flight cancellations as flu season hits Hong Kong amid the carrier’s pilot shortage.

The health authorities have warned that Hong Kong will enter the peak winter flu season from the week starting Jan 7, with an expected surge in flu cases between January and April. The city’s public hospitals have already seen a 20 to 30 per cent rise in patients with flu symptoms seeking help at their emergency rooms.

A finance worker in her 40s, who wanted to be known only as Sarah, said she had been checking her e-mails in case her flight was affected. She is due to return to Hong Kong with her family on Jan 6 after spending the festive season back home in London.

“I’m relieved it hasn’t been cancelled, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” she said. “The kids have to start school on (Jan 8). I don’t need the extra stress of trying to get us all booked on a new flight.”

Ms Tan Wanshan, an office worker in her 30s who has booked return tickets to Singapore over the Chinese New Year holiday in February, said she would feel less secure about flying with Cathay.

“I do feel that booking with Cathay in the future does seem to expose me to higher risks of flight changes,” she said. “But if it’s still cheaper than competitors like Singapore Airlines, I might still go with them. I just have to buy travel insurance earlier if I book my flights with Cathay.”