Airline finally draws a line under a "phenomenal team effort" and a remarkable chapter in aviation history
Cathay's 85th long-term parked aircraft finally takes off from Alice Springs
Cathay Group has welcomed its 85th and final aircraft back to Hong Kong after four years parked-up in the Australian desert.
The A330 Airbus plane flew into Hong Kong earlier this month and will undergo extensive hangar maintenance having stood idle since the early days of the Covid pandemic. The plane landed indefinitely in Alice Springs, Australia, on July 28, 2020.
As global transport came to a standstill, Cathay Pacific and HK Express, which is also owned by Cathay Group, parked the majority of their passenger fleet at Hong Kong airport and in the desert areas of Alice Springs and Ciudad Real in Spain. With a massive 70% of their aircraft grounded at the height of the pandemic, maintenance teams had scoured the globe for suitable locations to store the inactive planes. Desert areas of the world such as Alice and Ciudad Real were selected for their extremely dry and safe conditions. Humid areas and coastal regions with salt in the atmosphere are highly corrosive; in contrast, deserts have very low humidity of around 20 per cent and no extreme weather events, such as tropical typhoons.
The planes were parked on compacted strips of soil and concrete mixed to form a hard surface. Maintenance for parked aircraft is similar to that required for aircraft flying each day and in these confined spaces it was quite a challenge to keep the planes fully maintained, especially with the aircrafts' surface areas reaching scalding temperatures shortly after sunrise.
Every 'desert' aircraft underwent 16,000 inspections during the pandemic
Each aircraft parked in Alice Springs underwent a 14-day preservation check when it first arrived, which was followed by what in the end came to more than 16,000 periodic inspections and checks. It took a huge 800,000 labour hours to perform the preservation, periodic and reactivation maintenance required, with around 40,000 parts and items of specialised equipment shipped from Hong Kong to support desert operations.
“To manage this body of work across an unprecedented number of aircraft was an incredible achievement by the team, of which I am immensely proud,” said Cathay’ general manager of Engineering Operations, Bob Taylor.
“An incredible amount of work goes into keeping an aircraft safe and protected when it isn’t flying and then reactivating it for entry back into regular service,” added Cathay’s chief operations and service delivery officer, Alex McGowan. “To do this for more than 85 aircraft, as well as to manage the large number of aircraft that were parked in Hong Kong, is a phenomenal achievement.”
According to McGowan, the group’s focus is now firmly on the future. Cathay has more than 70 new aircraft on order and the right to acquire an additional 52 aircraft in the future. It is also exploring options for a new mid-size widebody aircraft.
“Parking and reactivating so many aircraft is a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking,” he said. “I am immensely proud of our teams’ incredible efforts as we reunite our last aircraft from the desert with the rest of our fleet and close a truly remarkable chapter in Cathay’s history.”
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