Cathay Pacific
Surviving Quarantine — August 2022

Cathay Pacific has been particularly stymied in the last two years. It is the de facto flag carrier for a small island city-state and only has international routes. With borders shut it’s difficult to fly anywhere. It is based in Hong Kong which, pursuing a zero-Covid policy in alignment with Beijing, imposed draconian authoritarian restrictions on travel and movement, particularly to isolate incoming visitors, but also affecting airline pilots and cabin crew.

Once the pandemic restrictions took hold in Feb/Mar 2020 Cathay’s passenger traffic essentially evaporated. For the rest of 2020 it saw passenger demand at only 1% of the levels it enjoyed in 2019 (and 2019, particularly the second half, had been a bad year for Cathay, because of the civil unrest that resulted from the HK Authority’s plans to tear up civil rights).