Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're dreaming of a great escape or actively making plans for one.

Today, I'm going to be talking about two very different responses to the COVID crisis in the great Asian hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore.

Of course, this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up for it at

independent.com.uk forward slash newsletters and it should be with you at 7 a.m. on Friday.

Well, some interesting news in coming in from Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong. This is the airline that well, many people regard as one of the absolute finest in the world.

It's been based in the territory for decades and has an extraordinarily good reputation for service and for safety, of course.

However, since the COVID crisis began, it has been very, very constrained over what it can do,

because Hong Kong is kind of going for a zero COVID policy.

That's the idea of the chief executive, Carrie Lam.

She's the chief executive of Hong Kong, not Cathay Pacific,

because they want to open the border fully with mainland China

and resume some kind of normality.

Now, of course, Cathay Pacific is very, very different.

It's looking at markets in Europe, of course, Cathay Pacific is very, very different. It's looking at the markets in

Europe, in Australia. Of course, that's still quite tricky. And elsewhere in Asia, they are

very much an international-focused airline. So it's a pretty tricky time. In order to get the zero COVID policy to work,

Hong Kong has very strict rules,

including a very strict hotel quarantine policy

that means that cabin crew and pilots are really not able to do much work before they have to go and sit in a

hotel. So they've got what's called a closed loop system. This is an attempt to get reasonable schedules

and organise them flying without too much quarantine. So the idea is if you're a pilot, if your cabin crew, then you are going to be really

busy for a three-week spell, mostly flying to and from Hong Kong, of course, because

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