Flights cancelled as Dragonair pilots quit over duty rosters, US dollar pay

DRAGONAIR has cancelled as many as eight flights a day as pilots quit the airline at a rate of more than one a week in a dispute over too much night work and US dollar pay, reports The South China Morning Post.

Thirty-four pilots and co-pilots have resigned over six months. Last month flights were cancelled including five between Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei.

"The salary for a Dragonair pilot is no longer competitive because of inflation and the state of the US dollar, and the rostering situation has become untenable," one pilot told the Hong Kong newspaper. "With the increase in the flight schedule and the wet-leased flights in China, some guys are doing 14 overnights a month and they're just fed up with it."

Dragonair denies the problem is linked to rostering. "There are currently more vacancies than there are pilots throughout the industry. Therefore, it is not surprising to see a degree of pilot turnover," said an airline spokeswoman.

A year after its HK$12 billion (US$1.5 billion) acquisition by Cathay Pacific, Dragonair managers have declined a union rostering proposal to ease back-to-back flights and overnight stops, the newspaper reported.

But Dragonair said of its 400 mostly foreign pilots that "crew sickness" was the cause of the eight cancellations on October 13 and that it had signed on 57 new pilots this year and would take in 10 more before 2008 and another 50 next year.

A Dragonair veteran pilot of 10 years said: "We haven't had a pay rise for seven years, but it's not really a pay issue. We have asked for a roster agreement for years and years."