Cathay reports improved punctuality to mainland with new ATC policy

Cathay Pacific CEO John Slosar stated the carrier's on-time performance rate on the Hong Kong-Shanghai sector has improved more than six-fold over the past seven months after the introduction of a new air traffic control policy by CAAC (South China Morning Post, 29-Jun-2011). In Nov-2010, CAAC shortened the horizontal separation between aircraft from a minimum of 32km to 16km, which doubles the number of flights an air corridor can handle each hour. China has stated it will increase on-time performance rates to 80% over the next five years after it fell to 75% in 2010.

John Slosar: "One day in November, I was looking at the on-time performance rate for China, and it suddenly went way up, to 65%. A few months earlier it would have been 10%. China is interesting in that way: they don't tell us about things [beforehand] - they just happen," John Slosar, CEO. Source: South China Morning Post, 29-Jun-2011.