Cathay Pacific will be investigated and could face possible legal action as the Hong Kong government looks into the recent Omicron variant outbreak in the financial hub which follows breach of Covid-19 rules involving air crew members of the airline.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday that the government is investigating the said breach of quarantine rules as well as reports that Cathay carried crew members returning to Hong Kong on cargo-only flights — earlier exempted from the isolation mandate — to skip the required hotel quarantine.
"We will take legal action once we have the full evidence of what wrong [Cathay] has gone into," Lam told a press briefing in Hong Kong as quoted by various media.
"Cathay Pacific is a very big non-compliance case because the air cargo crew should not have gone out during the quarantine at home. And worse still, if we discover through full investigations that some crew of Cathay Pacific, or some staff of Cathay Pacific, should not have been travelling back on a cargo flight and enjoying this exemption, that would be much bigger non-compliance," Lam added.
Hong Kong maintains a zero-Covid strategy that has kept cases low in the city but has largely impacted airline operations in the city, among others.
Meanwhile, for its part, Cathay Pacific said it will comply with the Hong Kong government's investigation with the airline's chairman Patrick Healy saying Cathay will "cooperate fully" with authorities.
The airline has also fired the crew involved in the breached of Covid rules, according to a report by Reuters, adding that the city’s flagship carrier takes "full responsibility" of the decision regarding rostering which Healy said he was "very confident" was "entirely in line with the government regulations which were in place until 29th December."
Since then, Hong Kong has further tightened its quarantine measures — including for air cargo crew. This has prompted Cathay Pacific to announce "substantial reductions" to its long-haul air cargo capacity for the first quarter of 2022.
The Hong Kong-based carrier also earlier halted for seven days all long-haul freight services to and from Hong Kong for seven days.
Cathay Pacific has said that it will operate about 20% of its pre-pandemic cargo capacity this month.
