Yesterday, Cathay Pacific confirmed that it has fired its Boeing fleetChief Pilot (i.e. the most senior pilot in CX Group) for performing anunscheduled low flyby over Boeing’s field on a VIP flight with the newBoeing 777-300ER aircraft (the one with Asia’s World City) livery. Theincident occurred on Jan 30 2008 as Cathay took delivery of theaircraft. As CX celebrated accepting the new Asia’s World Cityaircraft, it invited over 70 dignitaries to board the aircraft atBoeing’s field in Seattle to fly back to HongKong.
The flight wasperformed by the Boeing fleet Chief Pilot of Cathay Pacific and anothervery senior pilot as first officer. On board includes the Chairman andCEO of Cathay Pacific, several other senior management and some seniorgovernment officials and members of LEGCO (i.e. the parliament) ofHongKong. After taking off, the plane returned to Boeing’s air fieldand performed a low flyby above the runway at the height as low as 30ftwith its wheels up. The flyby was not planned and not approved. Thepassengers on board the flight were unaware of the flyby. Some toldreporters that they noticed the plane returned to the airport and flewlow, but thought it was probably a planned performance. It was laterfound that the pilot notified Seattle’s control of his plan to do soand has obtained the approval from ATC to do so, but he has neverrequested that with the airline and thus it was never approved by theairline.
2 weeks later, spotters who cheered the performance at the time andtook a video of the flyby posted it on Youtube and the managementCathay Pacific was shock to see what is described as an impulse andreckless action of the Chief Pilot. The Youtube video was subsequentlyrestricted for private viewing. The Chief Pilot was suspended forinternal investigation, and was fired yesterday. The co-pilot will bebanned from the flight instructor role for 6 months but will continueto fly normal passenger flights. HongKong’s CAA has asked for a reportfrom CX about the incident. Cathay Pacifc has called all passengers onboard the flight to explain the incident and the action it has taken.
Cathay Pacific has also issued a notice to all of its 2000-plus flightcrews stressing that all low flyby performance must be pre-approved forsafety and the airline has zero tolerance regarding safety violations.Cathay Pacific has approved low flyby before for air show performancebut factors such as weather must be considered in real time.
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