Cathay Pacific is being forced to take extreme measures to cope with new rules in Hong Kong that require flight crew to quarantine from Saturday, introducing a rotation policy that will put staff out of action for almost one month at a time after they’ve completed 21-day shifts. Crew who volunteer to take part in the airline’s so-called closed loop plan must isolate at Cathay’s Headland Hotel whenever they return to Hong Kong during their 21-day duty cycle. Once the three-week shift is over, they’ll need to self-isolate for 14 days in a hotel in Taikoo Shing on Hong Kong Island. Then they’ll get 14 days time off, bringing the full duty cycle to 49 days. Cathay has said the requirement for crew to quarantine could add as much as HK$400m ($52m) to its monthly cash burn, which is already as high as HK$1.5b due to an unprecedented slump in demand for air travel. The new measures, which come after Hong Kong extended the mandatory quarantine period for people arriving in the city, are aimed at shoring up the border, even as new daily coronavirus cases ease to low double digits and authorities relax some social-distancing rules. Under the new shift cycle, crew will need to take Covid-19 tests every time they arrive in Hong Kong, and they may be subjected to more when arriving in countries such as Australia, which also has strict broder measures in place. Enough staff have volunteered to take part in the program, the spokesperson said, without disclosing numbers. They’ll undergo medical surveillance for seven days after the 14-day hotel quarantine period.<br/>
oneworld
Finnair expects Q1 losses to be comparable to the levels reported in the three quarters since the pandemic hit, after today disclosing a full-year operating loss of E595m. The carrier says that during Q1 of 2021, it continues to operate a limited network because of travel restrictions and, as a result, the comparable operating loss for the period will be of a ”similar magnitude” to those seen in the second, third and fourth quarters of 2020. Finnair posted a comparable operating loss of E163m for Q4, contributing to the full-year loss of E595m. The latter figure falls to an operating loss of E465m when adjusted for one-off effects from changes to its pensions scheme. Full-year revenues slumped 73% in 2020 to E892m, as passenger levels fell 76% from 14.7m to just 3.5m. Finnair CE Topi Manner says: ”Our result for the year was [a loss of] E523.2m. Thanks to the rights issue of nearly the same size, our balance sheet and cash reserves remained at a healthy level. Our equity ratio was 24.6% and our cash reserves amounted to E823.7m at year end. During the year, we focused on securing the continuation of operations and our long-term competitiveness in a post-pandemic market that will be different from what it was before the pandemic.”<br/>
American Airlines Group and JetBlue Airways said Thursday they are launching the first phase of their partnership with codeshares on nearly 80 routes from New York and Boston.<br/>The joint announcement came even as the US Department of Justice and attorneys general in New York, Massachusetts and other jurisdictions continue to review the proposed tie-up. “American and JetBlue intend to cooperate with those investigations, but are proceeding with plans to implement this alliance,” American said in its annual report released late Wednesday. JetBlue and American are hoping the partnership, announced in July, will give them more competitive heft in the US Northeast. “The alliance is also essential to getting our planes back in the air profitably and crewmembers working again,” said JetBlue’s head of revenue planning, Scott Laurence. The two airlines are also introducing 33 new routes in the first phase of their alliance, which American’s chief revenue officer, Vasu Raja, called “the first step to delivering the best customer proposition with the biggest network in New York and Boston.”<br/>