The full article from the Hong Kong Mail is as follows:
"CATHAY Pacific Airways fired three pilots yesterday for employment breaches but insisted it was not trying to intimidate staff involved in a work-to-rule that is disrupting flights.
Meanwhile, it had more than 100 extra aircrew and flight attendants and 10 planes chartered from mainland airlines on stand-by to fill any gaps in its schedule.
Cathay said 55 of 130 flights yesterday suffered delays by 15 minutes to 90 minutes.
But it blamed the approaching Typhoon Utor for disruption of up to 20 inbound flights.
Director of corporate development Tony Tyler told a press conference last night that the sacking of the three pilots had been "in accordance with their conditions of service and the Hong Kong Employment Ordinance''.
He said one of the pilots was an eight-year veteran and union member who had received a previous warning about his job performance and was terminated after flight CX889 arrived from Vancouver two hours 10 minutes late on Tuesday.
The second pilot, who was not a union member, was fired for not taking enough rest before showing up to fly - a serious breach according to Mr Tyler.
The third pilot, a union member with 11 years' employment was sacked after he failed to report for duty without a "satisfactory reason'' for CX883 from Los Angeles.
Mr Tyler said the firings were "related to the particular actions of particular individuals'' and insisted there was no retaliation over the industrial action that began on Tuesday.
The general secretary of the Aircrew Officers' Association, John Findlay, said the firings were predictable and would not intimidate the pilots. "I don't think this will cause anything except a strengthening in the resolve of the members.''
Jaime Gomee, who arrived 3 hours late on CX700 from Karachi via Bangkok, complained that passengers were given a new excuse every 15 minutes.
"First I was told the cargo door was broken. And then I was told that they needed to change the crew. And after that they said they couldn't find something they needed,'' he said.
The 116 pilots, flight attendants and engineers booked into the Airport Regal Hotel are from Air China, China Northwest, China North, China Southwest and China Eastern - all of which have a much poorer safety record than Cathay's A+ grade. At least 306 passengers have lost their lives with the mainland-based airlines and all received an F in Airline Safety Grading published by the United States-based Air Travellers' Association, with an average of 7.24 fatal accidents per million flights since 1970.
The crash of a China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 in Guilin on November 24, 1992 was one of the worst accidents in Chinese civil aviation history. The plane hit a mountain while approaching a runway, killing 141."