Currently, the IOC is sparsely populated. With people working remotely because of COVID-19, the atmosphere is muted compared to the normal pre-pandemic business hum, which rises to a crescendo of strategic planning during severe disruptions. The current situation is less frenetic: with many aircraft parked up in drier climes in Australia and Spain during the pandemic, there are fewer pieces in play, although the same calculations are required.
‘In normal times we would be running more than 500 flights a day,’ Lam explains. ‘Now we’ve dropped to approximately 100 depending on the day of the week, which includes freighters and Air Hong Kong flights. With those numbers, the scale of your problems just shrinks exponentially.’
It also means that cargo is very much top of mind these days, and a priority. ‘When we’re running a normal schedule we don’t have time to consider so many requests for cargo and there is very little buffer,’ says Lam. ‘Now that we aren’t flying so many of our passenger routes, we are fielding a lot of requests about whether we can put on a cargo-only [passenger] plane because our Boeing 747 freighters are flying like crazy.’
But the IOC has to evaluate the knock-on effects of every change, which can be more significant than a single revenue boost – and the situation is complicated by the quarantine requirements in Hong Kong for air crew because of the pandemic.
Lam cites an example of a request for an extra stop in the Americas for a freighter to pick up some cargo in Vancouver, which is not unusual. He says: ‘We’ll work with crewing to see if the same pilots will be able to operate the flight or if they will go beyond their duty hours. If so, we need to see if there is reserve crew available in Los Angeles. Then we’ll look at the ramifications for the schedule if the plane arrives back later in Hong Kong. Then we need to check that Vancouver has the equipment and people in place to handle the shipment. If we can tick all the boxes, we’ll go back and say “yes”.’
Care is needed because while the shipment and revenue may be secured, schedule ramifications can rumble on for days. ‘Every time we do something, someone somewhere is not going to be happy,’ says Lam. ‘We have to look at the full picture and make decisions based on the least amount of impact for the whole schedule.’
But you can be assured that the IOC does their best to do what’s best.