[cwoodward]

On Friday Cathay Pacific completed the purchase of Hong Kong Express Airlines.
Hong Kong express is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cathay Pacific giving them control of 3 of the 4 Hong Kong based airlines and a ready made entry into the LCC market that they much need in order to fight with the large and fast growing stand-alone Asian based LLCs and the likes of full service Singapore and JAL who already have a substantial LLC presents.
This acquisition is a real poak in the eye for Qantas who Cathay fought off a couple of years ago from entering HK with a HK based subsidiary their Jetstar franchise. It was a battle hard fought and a very close run thing.

Cathay have been fast to appoint a new CEO who is a 20 year Cathay veteran senior executive.
HK Express has a 27 aircraft fleet and carries about 4.5 million passengers to Asian destinations with a strong focus on Japan
They are cheap and offer some good ex HK alternative destinations.
I would expect Cathay to rapidly grow the airline at first using older ex Dragon Air aircraft many of which will be replaced by new airbusses over the next 2 years.

4 users thanked author for this post.

Folium, w8ster, CathayLoyalist2, GivingupBA

[christ]

Cathay are daylight robbery in Asia. All moan re Ba but BA is so competitive. As a one world concorde lounge holder, I am considering Singapore from HK to SIN as first on their A380 is cheaper than Cathay business.

How do Cathay get away with it!

[Folium]

[quote quote=950104]Cathay are daylight robbery in Asia. All moan re Ba but BA is so competitive. As a one world concorde lounge holder, I am considering Singapore from HK to SIN as first on their A380 is cheaper than Cathay business.

How do Cathay get away with it![/quote]

Or maybe not…
A random selection of dates (3-10 Oct 2019) would seem to disagree.
HKG-SIN is fractionally more in J with CX compared to SQ (£1610 to £1564), and flying F with SQ on the same random dates would cost £2621.
Flying the reverse route on the same random dates, SQ costs £998 to CX at £945, both in J. Prices courtesy of Skyscanner.

Why has CX been able to dominate HKG, keeping Jetstar at bay and now buying up Hong Kong Express? If Air China takes out Hong Kong Airlines, CX would either own or have a significant minority share in all 4 HKG-based airlines.

The reason is quite simple. While Jardine Matheson (whose original fortunes were based on the trade of opium into China, see Opium Wars 1839-42 and 1856-60) scuttled ignominiously from Hong Kong in 1997,Swires chose to stay on, sell a 30% holding in CX to the PRC government-owned CITIC Pacific and CNAC and play the long game.

Jardine had earlier lost the battle for airline dominance in HKG when CX bought out the Jardine-owned Hong Kong Airways in 1959.

[cwoodward]

Christ wrote ‘All moan re Ba but BA is so competitive’.
Not exactly as pointed out above.
BA struggle to fill 2 flights a day from their home base to HK where as CX fills 7 daily flights from London plus one from Manchester.
If as you maintain CX is not competitive then I am left wondering exactly why your fellow ‘Concorde members’ are flocking to fly to Cathay Pacific.
It’s all rather difficult to understand.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Folium, w8ster

[w8ster]

[quote quote=950104]Cathay are daylight robbery in Asia. All moan re Ba but BA is so competitive. As a one world concorde lounge holder, I am considering Singapore from HK to SIN as first on their A380 is cheaper than Cathay business.

How do Cathay get away with it![/quote]

Might be different for this route, I regularly fly LHR to one of SEA destinations so usually requiring a stopover in HK or SG. In the last 10 years, only twice has SQ come in cheaper and not by much.

As for BA, it has never once been a cheaper option but I wouldn’t go with them even if only slightly cheaper if I take into consideration the product and service. To me that essentially meant more expensive given their much less superior offering in J.

[Author]

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