Dragonair pilot exodus 'grounding flights'
Crew shortage forces airline to cancel services
Simon Parry
Oct 28, 2007
Dragonair is being forced to cancel up to eight flights a day as senior captains and first officers leave the airline at a rate of more than one a week.
Six captains resigned in the space of a week this month, and 34 first officers and captains have handed in their notice in the past six months, pilots say. They blame a long-running dispute over rosters and pay.
On October 13 eight flights were cancelled - including five between Hong Kong and Shanghai and two between Hong Kong and Taipei - with crew shortages cited as the reason in all cases and cockpit crew shortages cited in two cases.
A year after its HK$12 billion takeover by Cathay Pacific (SEHK: 0293), cancellations on Hong Kong's second-biggest airline are running at a rate of two a day.
Pilots say managers have repeatedly refused to implement a rostering agreement to ease the strain on pilots handling a growing volume of back-to-back flights and overnight stops. However, Dragonair, which has around 400, mostly expatriate, pilots, says it is feeling the impact of a worldwide shortage of cockpit crew.
An airline spokeswoman said the eight cancellations on October 13 were due to "crew sickness". It had already hired 57 new pilots this year and planned to hire 10 more before the end of the year and another 50 next year, she said.
One senior pilot, who has been with Dragonair for more than 10 years, said the resignations signalled deep-rooted discontent.
"I have never seen morale so low. Pilots are leaving because they're thoroughly fed up with the management," he said. "We haven't had a pay rise for seven years, but it's not really a pay issue. We have asked for a roster agreement for years and years. The Dragonair Pilots' Association has provided two draft agreements but management just look at them and nothing happens."
The pilot said eight cancellations in one day was unprecedented.
"It has usually been about two cancellations a day, but the situation is clearly getting worse."
Dragonair pilots have since March 2005 imposed a contract compliance policy in their efforts to secure a rostering agreement, and a captain familiar with ongoing negotiations said they were deadlocked. Under contract compliance, pilots refuse to do extra work to cover for colleagues on holiday or sick leave.
Another senior pilot said: "The salary for a Dragonair pilot is no longer competitive because of inflation and the state of the US dollar, and the rostering situation has become untenable. With the increase in the flight schedule and the wet-leased flights in China, some guys are doing 14 overnights a month and they're just fed up with it."
Dragonair is leasing fully crewed planes to airlines on the mainland, a practice called wet-leasing.
He said the pilots were leaving to join Korean Air, Emirates and Air China (SEHK: 0753, announcements, news) . "In one week we had six pilots leave - all of them captains."
The Dragonair spokeswoman denied the exodus of pilots was linked to rostering. "There are currently more vacancies than there are pilots throughout the industry. Therefore, it is not surprising to see a degree of pilot turnover."
The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation estimates the global pilot shortage will top 2,000 by the end of 2010.
The Dragonair spokeswoman said: "The management and the Dragonair Pilots' Association have been in discussion for some time on issues such as pay and conditions, rostering practices and the like. We are awaiting a response from the pilots' representatives to our offer on the salary and benefits packages which was made in early October. In addition, the company has formed a team to review the provision of additional benefits to many of its pilots."