Covid finally ‘over’ for Cathay as last parked aircraft returns from the Red Centre

A fixture of the Alice Springs aircraft storage facility is finally taking flight, 1410 days after Cathay Pacific parked the A330 in the Red Centre.

Three years, ten months and ten days since Cathay Pacific sent its first aircraft into storage at Alice Springs to wait out the Covid-19 pandemic, that same A330 is returning home to Hong Kong and back into service.

The widebody jet was ultimately one of 76 aircraft the airline parked at Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage from July 2020 onwards, after realising the sudden shutdown of air travel was more than temporary.

With virtually every airline in the world grounded to some extent, Cathay Pacific general manager of engineering operations Robert Taylor said it was a challenging task to find space for storage.

“Cathay Pacific had 175 passenger aircraft at the time, and suddenly we had 175 aircraft on our doorstep, lined up on taxiways,” Mr Taylor said.

“Having all those aircraft in Hong Kong presented a few problems — number one it congested the airport which was still operating a lot of cargo flights, and aircraft still require maintenance even when they’re not operating, and we couldn’t perform maintenance on taxiways.”

To make matters worse, it was coming up to typhoon season in Hong Kong, which was not considered a good environment for aircraft at the best of times with its humidity and proximity to the ocean.

So Cathay Pacific set about searching for a solution to get a large number of aircraft out, but the problem was, so was every other airline across the world.

“We had to move fast, and we found Alice Springs, which was the perfect location. It was the middle of the desert, low humidity, hot, and it was inland,” said Mr Taylor.

“We moved quick and one way or the other we sent 76 aircraft to Alice Springs. We didn’t know how long this would all last — nobody did — and we had some assumptions at the beginning. They turned out to be wrong.”

Cathay Pacific has taken its last aircraft out of storage at Alice Springs closing a 1410-day chapter.

As ideal as the Alice Springs’ climate was, the Red Centre presented other challenges to stored aircraft, not the least of which was dust.

“Wildlife was one of the challenges — snakes, lizards, spiders and those Australian type critters,” Mr Taylor said.

“That was one of the things you had to pre-empt and prepare for, so when the aircraft arrived in Alice Springs it had to be preserved and part of that was covering up all the entrance points to the aircraft, totally sealing the airframe to keep things out.”

With all but one aircraft now back in Hong Kong and back in service, Mr Taylor said they were yet to discover any unpleasant stowaways.

That was just as well, with Cathay Pacific finding the rapid rebound in travel demand meant every aircraft was needed in the network, once they had been cleared to fly.

“It’s a testament to the work the team did with this unprecedented task to manage such a volume of aircraft, all of which arrived in Hong Kong clean and with no issues detected in the hangar check,” he said.

In addition to the 105 people employed by APAS, Cathay Pacific had its own five-person team in Alice Springs, who altogether amassed a breathtaking 1 million labour hours working on the fleet.

Mr Taylor said it was an amazing feat that he hopes will never have to be repeated.

“The return of (A330) B-HLV on Thursday closes a chapter for the airline, and it certainly does for the engineering team involved in managing this program,” he said.

“For some of the team, it’s quite emotional after nearly four years of managing these aircraft in Alice Springs. It’s been quite a journey, but this closes a chapter on what they’ve achieved.”

Originally published as Covid finally ‘over’ for Cathay as last parked aircraft returns from the Red Centre