Hong Kong Airlines goes into "critical survival mode"

In order to stave off a total collapse, Hong Kong Airlines has decided to go into a "critical survival mode". The airline, which was already having financial struggles pre-Corona, is taking additional restructuring steps as the recovery of (passenger) air travel is going very slow.

One of the measures taken is offering co-workers voluntary long-pay leave scheme but his could change into a 40% forced job cut if not enough co-workers apply for the scheme. Fleetwise, the airline will be grounding all of its twelve A320s until at least mid-2022 and reduce its flying fleet to eight A330s. This means thirteen A330s will be parked, which is three more than today. Five of the eight A330s will be the airline's A330-200Fs, the other so-called "phreighters".

Hong Kong Airlines was founded in 2001 as CR Airways and renamed in 2006 when it became part of the HNA Group. Next to its twelve A320s, nine A330-200s, five A330-200Fs and seven A330-300s, it also has one remaining A350-900 in the fleet which is also in storage.

Photo by Anton Homma.