Cathay Pacific Airways, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent companies, has admitted that it faces a “substantial loss” in the first half of this year due to the COVID–19 outbreak
Cathay has grounded 140 of its planes due to the outbreak, and has warned that it is expecting capacity to fall by 65 per cent in March and April, this is of the back of a 28 per cent plunge in earnings in the second half of last year due to ongoing anti-government protests.
“We expect to incur a substantial loss for the first half of 2020,” chairman Patrick Healy said in a statement.
“We have no idea when a recovery will take place and we don’t know exactly what it would look like,” he added. “All we know is we remain in a very dynamic situation”.
Its cargo business was also hurt by a US-Chinese tariff war that depressed trade.
It would also not rule out making job cuts, with 80 per cent of employees already agreeing to three weeks of unpaid leave as a cost saving measure.
