As Omicron spread to at least 50 people in Hong Kong last week the government looked to one place in particular for blame – the city’s flagship airline, Cathay Pacific. Two crew were accused of breaching their home quarantine, going shopping or meeting friends, and spreading the highly transmissible variant in the city. As numbers rose, infection flow charts were published marking cases with the airline’s brand while the government launched inquiries and threatened legal action. Pro-Beijing figures and state media called for punishment.
The airline had just come off a government ban on flying key international routes, a punishment for carrying Covid-positive passengers. Around the same time the ban was imposed in late December, quarantine rules were tightened after a pilot tested positive, and then again just days later after three crew also did, and then again after the latest incidents.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, described the airline as “a very big noncompliance case” and accused it of sending some crew back to the territory on empty cargo flights to access shorter quarantine periods.
“This has to be put under full investigation, and we will take legal action once we have the full evidence of what wrong they went into,” Lam said.
Hong Kong’s pandemic border restrictions are among the strictest in the world, with bans on flights from seven countries and transit passengers from another 140. On a single day last week, just 165 people flew into what was once one of the world’s 10 busiest airports.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/17/deep-trouble-cathay-pacific-descends-further-as-punitive-pandemic-worsens