CATHAY PACIFIC'S move to new headquarters at Chek Lap Kok will bring all its departments under a single roof and save countless millions of dollars, believes Tony Tyler, director of planning and ground operations for the carrier.
"We're dotted around 19 major locations in Hong Kong, and clearly this makes for significant difficulties and inefficiencies in just managing ourselves, our time and communicating with each other. This development gives us the opportunity to improve on that. It will bring major cost savings in two areas. One is crew accommodation, which is why we're putting up a staff hotel," says Tyler.
"By the time the new airport opens, we'll have so many of our flight deck crews based overseas, but still spending significant amounts of time, in Hong Kong on slip patterns that, it makes sense for us to build our own accommodation, rather than buy in from other hotels," he believes.
Asked when Cathay expected to see a return on its investment, Tyler says: "I'm afraid I can't go into the finer points of the financial analysis, but it has a pay-back period of comfortably less than 50 years. It has a very strong net present value."
Source: Flight International