Cathay Pacific CEO apologises for multiple rounds of flight cancellations

Cathay Pacific's CEO Ronald Lam has apologised for the recent travel disruption and reiterated there will be no more flight cancellations during the Lunar New Year period. 

Lam said on Thursday during a media briefing that the airline overestimated the number of available pilots and underestimated the impact of seasonal influenza which forced its staff to come down with flu. 

“I must emphasise that all the current flight cancellations have been processed and completed a few days back, so these are not new cancellations,” Lam said. 

Lam reiterated that the company, including himself, is deeply sorry for causing the inconvenience and will learn and make improvements from it. 

This comes after the airline recently apologised for cancelling over 80 flights since Christmas Eve, including flights between Hong Kong and countries such as Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Melbourne, Dubai, London and Amsterdam. It is cutting around 12 flights a day from January to February over the busy Lunar New Year travel period.

Don't miss: Cathay Pacific’s brand sentiments plummet following mass flight cancellations

This has caused a dip in Cathay's brand sentiments. Social monitoring firm Meltwater saw over 700 mentions in Hong Kong regarding the incident since 29 December 2023, with 11% positive, 30.5% negative and 58.5 neutral sentiments.

Before Cathay Pacific’s flight cancellations arrangements, its sentiments were 24.1% positive and 8.2% negative. However, since the flight cancellations, negative sentiments surrounding Cathay have increased to 35.2%. Keywords associated with the incident include “cancellations”, "manpower" (人手), "new flight details", "flights to avoid", and "dozen flights".

In response, Cathay's chief operations and service delivery officer Alex McGowan said the company has worked hard to minimise the impact. "Over 96% of customers affected between 1 January and 29 February have been given alternate flight options within 24 hours of their original departure time, while 93% have been protected onto other Cathay Pacific services, with the remaining protected onto our airline partners," he told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE previously.

He is also leading a task force to ensure the company identifies and resolves the underlying issues. "We will ensure that we improve as a result and can deliver the high-quality services and reliability Hong Kong deserves," he said.

On the other hand, the secretary for transport and logistics Lam Sai Hung said that his department has instructed the Civil Aviation Department to continue monitoring Cathay Pacific’s relevant arrangements.

Related articles:

Google defends Cathay ad aired on Alaska Airlines news report
HK Express added to Asia Miles programme following Cathay Pacific takeover
Cathay Pacific CEO says discrimination incident caused 'significant damage' to image