CATHAY Pacific Airways cancelled almost all its scheduled flights from Hong Kong to Singapore on Tuesday (Sep 3), as well as a raft of other services across Asia, after discovering a faulty engine component on some of its Airbus A350s.
Eight of Cathay’s nine scheduled Hong Kong-Singapore services on Sep 3 were scrapped, according to the airline’s website. The only flight still due to depart as at Tuesday mid-morning was an afternoon connection on a Boeing 777.
Meanwhile, nearly half of Cathay’s services on Tuesday from Hong Kong to Bangkok and those to Tokyo’s Narita airport have also been axed. Of those still running, none are on an A350 aircraft. Cathay has said some 48 individual flights, including return legs, have been cancelled.
The Hong Kong-based airline, among the world’s biggest operators of the long-haul A350, identified the component failure on a plane that was forced to return from a flight originally headed to Zurich on Monday. A subsequent check of the fleet revealed several of the same engine parts needed replacing.
The Hong Kong-Singapore service is a flagship leg for Cathay, and a key route for regional connectivity, plied daily by hundreds of business people and other travellers. The airline did not specify the fault it had found.
The engine is made by Rolls-Royce Holdings, whose shares plunged as much as 8.2 per cent on Monday.
Cathay Pacific shares in Hong Kong were down 0.4 per cent. BLOOMBERG
