The incident of flight cancellation by HKE and follow-up actions
Mr CHAN Chun-ying noted that HKE would implement a series of improvement measures to raise its quality of service during the six-month “consolidation period”, and that it would provide regular reports to CAD on the implementation progress of the improvement measures in the said period. He referred to the practice of the banking industry that third-party experts would be engaged by the relevant regulatory body in assessing the feasibility of the enhancement measures involving major changes proposed by the bank concerned. He suggested that similar practice of engaging third-party experts in assessing the feasibility of the improvement measures to be implemented by HKE could be adopted.
DDGCA advised that appropriate expertise was available within CAD to assess and monitor the implementation of HKE’s improvement measures. He further advised that information provided by HKE to CAD in the past two months had shown HKE’s progress in implementing the improvement measures.
Regulation over airline operations
Mr CHAN Chun-ying noted that CAD might step up its monitoring on the air operator with unscheduled inspections if required. In this connection, he sought information on the number of unscheduled inspections conducted by CAD on HKE and other airlines in the past.
DDGCA undertook to provide the relevant information after the meeting. Other than the unscheduled inspections, he supplemented that CAD would conduct routine inspections on air operators to ensure their safe operations. These inspections included flight inspections, inspections on maintenance, documents inspections, training inspections, inspection visits at out-stations, and inspections on examiners etc..
Mr CHAN Chun-ying noted that neither the International Civil Aviation Organization Annex VI nor Cap. 448C mandated a standard for calculating the ratio of standby crew or the minimum number of the overall cabin crew of an airline. In this connection, he enquired if CAD would set the minimum requirement on the ratio of the relevant standby staff members for a flight, so as to facilitate early intervention by CAD when problems arose. In response, DDGCA advised that whilst there was a statutory minimum manning ratio of cabin crew to passengers on each flight, it was the responsibility of air operators, taking into account their own actual operations and characteristics, to make available sufficient number of cabin crew (including that of standby crew) to operate a flight.
DDGCA advised that the improvement measures raised by HKE were specific to the problems arising from its internal management and corporate governance. CAD would continue to monitor the operations of other airlines through its regular inspection mechanism. 33. Mr Paul TSE considered that the operations of full-service airlines and