reader Posted June 27, 2022 Posted June 27, 2022 From Bangkok Post HONG KONG: When Jasmine Lau received an email from Cathay Pacific Airways last month asking if she wanted to return to her old job as a flight attendant, she contemplated the proposition, but eventually decided against applying. Almost two years after being laid off from the airline's now-defunct subsidiary Cathay Dragon, the Hong Konger, who is in her 30s, is now working as an administrative officer in a bank. "All my friends, we changed careers and now we are getting used to the new job and we don't want to go back to something that is not secure and not stable," said Lau, referring to herself and her flight attendant friends from Cathay Dragon. Now, Cathay Pacific Group is looking to go on a hiring spree that will add 8,000 new staff across its subsidiaries. Some 4,000 of them will be recruited for Cathay Pacific Airways between now and the end of 2023, of which 700 will be pilots and 2,000 are cabin crew. The airline is looking ahead to a recovery in air travel, even as Hong Kong continues to stick to its "dynamic-zero" Covid-19 strategy. In an interview with the South China Morning Post on June 15, Cathay Pacific CEO Augustus Tang Kin-wing said the "direction of travel was there" and the airline wanted to be prepared as it took time to train and recruit new staff. Cathay has begun adding more flights, and plans to double its flight destinations from 29 at the start of the year to 60 by the end of 2022. Before the pandemic, it flew to 108 places. But it faces competition from other carriers which are also in the market to hire. Start-up Greater Bay Airlines has been adding pilots and cabin crew to its roster as it plans its first commercial flight next month. Other airlines are also hiring and have struggled to recruit quickly enough to meet an increase in passenger demand over the summer, leading to flight cancellations, baggage chaos and long queues at airports from Sydney to Amsterdam. Hundreds of British Airways workers at London's Heathrow airport have voted in favour of strike action later this summer in a dispute over pay. The city's Gatwick airport has capped the number of flight departures and Amsterdam has also limited the number of passengers flying from its Schiphol airport during summer. Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), warned on June 20 at the body's annual meeting in Doha that the recent chaos at some major airports was a result of a "disconnect" between supply and demand of labour, and could spill into the first quarter of next year. Quote
