Word: cathay
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Back in the roaring twenties, Shanghai doubled as Asia's commercial center and a playground for swashbuckling entrepreneurs from around the globe. Nightclubs like the Art Deco Ciro's and elegant hotels like the Cathay earned the city its nickname: the Paris of the Orient. And today, after decades in eclipse, Shanghai is once again red hot and swinging. As CEOs and heads of state gather there in October for conferences prior to the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, they will find plenty to do in their leisure time. Crumbling colonial villas have been converted into funky bars...
...funnel cash to their flag carriers to keep them in the air. Seoul is letting Korean Air and Asiana Airlines pass on a $1.25 per passenger war-risk premium and has given the two carriers $2.5 million and $1.4 million, respectively, in aid and tax cuts. Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific was nearly grounded before the airline was able to get a new (and more expensive) insurance policy from an unnamed company...
...negotiations could commence. Although airline staff members get annual training in handling hijackers, a kamikaze mission was not in any scenario. In the past, "if someone outside the cockpit was threatening to chop someone's head off, nine times out of 10, you'd open the door," says a Cathay Pacific pilot based in Hong Kong...
...sackings, though legal in Hong Kong, are the first time Cathay has bypassed its usual disciplinary and dismissal procedures, which feature a hearing and give the employee the right to appeal. "Essentially we lost confidence in them," says Lisa Wong, a Cathay spokesperson. "We reviewed their individual employment histories and looked carefully at their overall standards of conduct and employment attitudes." But she added: "There was no doubt of their flying abilities...
...news on a 2 a.m. wake-up call. "They just started picking selected people," Findlay says, "so that when the word goes around to other pilots, it would instill fear in them." (Among pilots, a rumor is spreading of a second list of 118 names.) The pilots call Cathay's tactics union busting. Hong Kong's wary travelers call it just another summer...