Jim Eagles: Hard work helped Cathay to soar

Go out to Auckland International Airport and see the dozens of airlines and thousands of passengers flying off to every part of the world and it's easy to forget that travel was not always so easy and travellers did not always have so many options.

Things were very different, even as recently as 30 years ago, when Cathay Pacific Airways first opened an office in New Zealand.

David Figgins, now Cathay's country manager but then a one-man band, recalls that when he first set up shop "aviation was over-regulated and monopolised by a state-owned airline".

Only a handful of international airlines called at New Zealand, fewer than 250,000 Kiwis took trips abroad in a year, and fewer than 350,000 foreign tourists came here.

Cathay Pacific's operation was a basic affair, with Figgins doing any bookings "on a card with a pencil and a rubber".

For the first eight years after opening its office the airline had no direct links to this country and had a battle to get landing rights.

Even when Cathay did start a service to Auckland it was only weekly and operated on a shared basis with Air New Zealand and Air Nuigini. The flight had a brief stopover at Port Moresby but passengers had to stay on board as the transit lounge was not big enough to cope with a jumbo jet.

The service lapsed after two years when Air Niugini pulled out and there was a two-year break with no Cathay flights to New Zealand. In 1986 Air New Zealand and Cathay started another joint venture with each airline operating it in alternate years.

In 1991 the joint venture terminated and each airline started its own service.

Initially, Figgins says, it was very hard for Cathay to make its mark. "Everybody got us confused with Air Pacific. No one knew anything about us. We were regarded as being a very small Far Eastern carrier."

To try to change that he traipsed the country taking as many travel agents as possible out to breakfast, lunch and dinner, trying to win business away from the national airline. "I became a legend in my own lunchtime but I don't think it was very good for my health."

It is all very different today.

Now, as Cathay Pacific celebrates its 30th birthday in this country, Figgins has 35 staff in Auckland - plus 30 flight crew and nine cabin crew based in New Zealand - and his cards, pencil and rubber have been replaced by e-tickets.

Crucially, Figgins says, "New Zealand is now one of the most deregulated countries in the world for aviation."

Cathay is just one of 28 international airlines with regular services here - and the number is growing - and it runs 10 to 12 flights a week.

All that choice and competition has, he says, been hugely beneficial to New Zealanders. "It's now easy to go anywhere in the world and on most routes there's a range of options to choose from."

Thanks to all those choices, last year 1.7 million New Zealanders took trips abroad and 2.3 million tourists arrived.

With Cathay Pacific now firmly established on the aviation scene it's also easy to forget the airline's decidedly humble beginnings.

It had its origins in 1945 when a swashbuckling American aviator, Roy Farrell, bought a war-surplus DC3, affectionately named Betsy, and with his Australian mate Sydney de Kantzow operated a cargo service out of Shanghai.

The following year political pressure forced them out of Shanghai and they moved to Hong Kong's damaged Kwai Tak Airfield.

Betsy and her sister DC3 Nikki were registered in Hong Kong and Farrell and de Kantzow put up HK$1 each to form a new company called Cathay Pacific Airways.

Their fledging air passenger and cargo service took a big leap forward two years later when one of Hong Kong's major trading companies, Butterfield and Swire, bought nearly half the company and Australian National Airways took a 35 per cent stake.

The revamped company, with a nominal capital of HK$10 million, expanded rapidly.

By the time the airline reached New Zealand its fleet had expanded to 12 Boeing 707s and three Lockheed TriStars and its routes had grown from Asia to North America and Europe.

That growth has continued and Cathay Pacific now operates 650 flights a week to 85 destinations on all five continents.

In sharp contrast to its rough-and-ready early days, in 2003 the annual Skytrax survey, involving 4.4 million passengers, voted Cathay Airline of the Year.

Figgins says New Zealand remains a rather challenging destination "because of the distance, the isolation and the lack of population".

But, he adds, "The country is now very much part of the international aviation network - a development Cathay Pacific has been very much a part of - and we've all benefited as a result."