Travel demand recovers after Covid-19, Cathay Pacific recruits thousands of employees

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China)'s flagship airline Cathay Pacific Airways announced on November 24 that it will hire 5,000 employees by 2024.

Nhu cầu đi lại phục hồi hậu Covid-19, Cathay Pacific tuyển thêm hàng ngàn nhân viên

Cathay Pacific hires thousands of new staff due to severe staff shortage. (Source: CSMP)

Cathay Pacific Airways chief financial officer Rebecca Sharpe said the airline plans to hire more workers to address its severe staff shortage.

Cathay Pacific Airways plans to hire 4,000 people this year, including former employees. The airline plans to add 5,000 by 2024 in a variety of roles, from ground staff to pilots and flight attendants.

Cathay Pacific Airways employed around 21,900 staff as of the end of June 2023. This figure has fallen by 11,000 since June 2019 due to large-scale layoffs amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, demand for travel has increased sharply since the beginning of this year, leading to a major staff shortage. The airline's union has criticized deteriorating working conditions.

Meanwhile, earnings at Cathay Pacific Airways have recovered. The airline reported a net profit of about HK$4.27 billion ($548 million) in the first half of 2023, compared with a loss of HK$5 billion a year earlier. Ms. Sharpe said this was the first year of profit for Cathay Pacific Airways since 2019.

Previously, on November 23, Cathay Pacific Airways announced that it would serve 14.57 million passengers from January to October 2023, an increase of nearly 10 times over the same period last year, mainly on regional routes, including services within and outside mainland China.

Passenger numbers on North American routes are also rising, with the airline adding Chicago as its fifth destination in the region last month. The airline also carried 19.4% more cargo between January and October 2023 than a year earlier.

Cathay Pacific Airways’ director of customer travel Lavinia Lau said demand for fresh produce from key markets in the Southwest Pacific, the Americas and Japan into Hong Kong and mainland China is expected to increase as the perishable food season approaches. In addition, e-commerce shipping demand is expected to remain strong into the year-end.

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