BIT HARSH SLOPPY JOE
Sloppy Joe,
No one can predict with 100% certainty when a where and with what severity a typhoon will hit so some one has to make a call and put a plan into action.
Having experienced a fair few of these events in HKG I can assure you this was managed the best of all. Well rested Crew and aircraft were in position at outports ready to return to HKG. The airport was not over run with thousands of people going there for flights that were never leaving. Crew did not have to venture out in a T8 to the airport only to get stranded when public transport gets cancelled as well as their flights.
The other possibility was to have airplanes divert to ports over extended with no where to park, catering supplies exhausted, crew out of hours, airplanes in the wrong place, HKIA over run with angry exhausted passengers and only skeleton manpower at the airport, luggage soaked, water in the mec/cec and general mayhem. in the past the recovery operation has been chaotic and taken a seriously extended time to get back to normal ops.
The fact that the weather was not as poor as anticipated can hardly be attributed to poor planning by CX. At the end of the day the recovery is swift and normal scheduling will resume quickly.