The city’s second largest air carrier Hong Kong Airlines reportedly started issuing redundancy notices to its workforce in a bid to survive the ongoing pandemic. As part of a survival plan, the cash-strapped airline would also temporarily focus on cargo-only operations.
The air carrier started issuing redundancy notices on June 23, 2021. According to one of the redundancy letters, seen by the South China Morning Post, the ailing Hong Kong Airlines cited its recent disclosure to ground its entire fleet of Airbus A320 aircraft and deploy eight Airbus A330s with a focus on only cargo operations.
The all-Airbus airline has a total of 34 aircraft in its fleet standing at an average of 8.8 years, as per planespotters.net data. The largest part of the airline’s fleet consists of 21 Airbus A330 aircraft. Adding to that, Hong Kong Airlines has 12 Airbus A320s and one Airbus A350XWB.
This is not the first time the Hong Kong-based air carrier announces layoffs. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Hong Kong Airlines, a member of the recently bankrupt Chinese aviation conglomerate HNA Group, has already axed jobs.
“These ongoing adjustments have not only drastically affected our revenue but also reduced our operating crew and staffing requirements in the foreseeable future,” Chris Birt, the airline’s director of service delivery, told staff in a memo on December 11, 2020.