Al Jazeera English published this video item, entitled “Hong Kong airline to cut thousands of jobs amid pandemic” – below is their description.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific has announced a major restructuring plan as it struggles to deal with travel restrictions and a big drop in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The airline had only recently began recovering from protests in Hong Kong that badly hit demand last year.
With international borders closed, the Hong Kong-based airline saw its passengers drop by nearly 82 percent in the first eight months of this year.
It will cut almost 6,000 positions and close down its regional airline, Cathay Dragon.
Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi reports from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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Al Jazeera English YouTube Channel
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In This Story: Hong Kong
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta of the South China Sea. With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.
