Cathay Pacific has announced that passengers booked on its flights during the Chinese New Year travel period will be unaffected by its recent spate of flight cancellations, adding that all cancellations have already been made.

The Hong Kong-based airline, which operates 102 flights weekly between Singapore and Hong Kong, said there will be no flight cancellations for the period between Feb 7 and 18.

Cathay Pacific’s regional general manager for South-east Asia Dominic Perret said that, outside of this period, an average of four flights per week between the two destinations were cancelled in January and February. These are part of a wider series of 12 cancellations daily, announced across its flight operations for the first two months of 2024.

Chief operations and service delivery officer Alex McGowan said in a statement on Jan 10: “Over the Christmas and New Year period, we underestimated the number of reserve pilots we would need. Given our January pilot rosters were already set in mid-December, the lack of adequate reserve levels persisted into January.

“In order to stabilise the current operation, we needed to cancel further flights across the first two weeks of January.”

He added that flight cancellations had peaked at 27 flights on Jan 7 but that this would be reduced over the coming weeks.

Mr McGowan said at least 96 per cent of customers who had flights cancelled between Jan 1 and Feb 29 have been given alternative flight options within 24 hours of their original departure time. The majority of these have been moved onto other Cathay Pacific services, with the remaining moved to other airlines.

The airline said on Dec 28 it had to reduce flights in end-December after it was hit by a worse-than-expected pilot shortage due to seasonal illness.

This compounded the existing shortage of Airbus A350 pilots who had already flown 900 hours within a 12-month rolling period and were unable to fly more due to safety reasons, as well as retrenchments and resignations due to the Covid-19 pandemic and salary reductions.

As at December, the airline had 2,532 pilots, or 35 per cent less from end-2019, according to data from the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association, which represents Cathay Pacific pilots.

This has caused the airline’s post-pandemic recovery to lag in comparison with other airlines, said the association, which also called for a government inquiry into the shortage.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee on Jan 9 expressed his concerns about the situation, calling for the airline to address its capacity issues.