'Future Bright For Cathay, Despite Few Passengers'

A logistics professor on Tuesday said Cathay Pacific has a good future ahead, despite having almost no air traffic and passengers.

Over the weekend, its flights from Kuala Lumpur were banned for two weeks because of a cluster of coronavirus cases onboard.

Achim Czerny from Polytechnic University's Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies said the airline is in an especially difficult situation because unlike carriers in the United States or Europe, most of Cathay's flights are international and not domestic, and therefore affected by travel bans because of the pandemic.

But he said one advantage Cathay has is its location. Czerny said: "The Asia-Pacific region... will remain a region of very strong growth, and there is the Greater Bay Area, one of the most dynamic regions in the world, so I would say for Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific, you know, despite all these changes, there is a good future ahead but again the most important (thing) at the moment is really just simply to survive".

Czerny added that another advantage Cathay has is that it has retired all of its large aircraft, which are very hard to fill.