Cathay asks crew to work 21-day stints to avoid quarantine

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/>