Cathay tries the limbo rock, finally

THE big screen is rife with maudlin yet tickling tales of wealthy mandarins who open their homes to penurious scamps to "civilise" them at considerable risk to the practised calm of the manor. What ensues is a capricious cultural collision. Professor Higgins struggled with Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady to say "O not Ow" and luxury hotels and legacy airlines today are wrestling with their own bratty brands, embarrassingly downscale but seemingly necessary to get a bigger bite of the pie.

After years of stubborn nose-up disdain for the bruising hurly-burly of low-cost operations, Cathay Pacific has taken the plunge with a HK$4.93 billion (S$855.9 million) offer for homegrown Hong Kong low-cost carrier (LCC), HK Express, which brings to the stable planes with names like siu maai (pork dumpling). Will this be a marriage made in hell? Or a lifesaver, for a carrier finally struggling out of badly hedged aviation fuel bets? A face-saving and much delayed HK$2.3 billion profit in 2018 was a shot in the arm for Cathay, which has lost some of its premium gloss over the years.

Big is better mindset