Exclusive | Hong Kong’s zero-Covid strategy ‘killing’ Cathay Pacific, CEO of major shareholder warns

Qatar Airways boss Akbar Al Baker tells Post he believed significant percentage of Cathay flights would have been back in the air by this stage of the pandemic

‘You can’t just shut the aviation industry [down] because somebody got infected coming in [on] someone’s aeroplane,’ he says in exclusive interview

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Hong Kong’s zero-Covid strategy is having a devastating effect on the city’s flagship carrier, a major shareholder has warned. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 12:08pm, 18 Dec 2021Updated: 4:37pm, 18 Dec 2021

Hong Kong’s zero-Covid strategy has almost shut down the local aviation industry and its infection-control policies are “killing” Cathay Pacific, the CEO of Qatar Airways, the flag carrier’s third-largest shareholder, has warned.

Akbar Al Baker expressed frustration at the stringent border-control rules at Hong Kong International Airport, which ban airlines that have brought in passengers infected with Covid-19. The measures have been stepped up further recently to prevent the import of the more transmissible Omicron variant.

“You can’t just shut the aviation industry [down] because somebody got infected coming in [on] someone’s aeroplane,” the outspoken airline chief said in an exclusive interview with the Post in which he also discussed the immediate fallout from the new variant’s spread and looked to the year ahead.

Akbar Al Baker, chief executive officer of Qatar Airways, looks forward to the year ahead in an exclusive interview with the Post. Photo: Bloomberg

Al Baker’s angst stems from his company’s key investment in flagging Cathay Pacific. The airline took an initial 9.61 per cent stake from Kingboard Chemical in November 2017 for HK$5.16 billion (US$661 million), or HK$13.65 a share.

On Friday, one Cathay share was worth HK$6.30.

“I’m a little bit disappointed that Hong Kong has remained closed until now,” said Al Baker. “I would have expected at least, not fully, but a major part of Cathay’s fleet in the skies again.”

Under the current policy, an airline is banned from flying a route for two weeks if it had carried at least three infected passengers on the same flight or two or more cases on two separate flights from the same destination over a seven-day period.