The Cathay Cargo Terminal at Hong Kong International Airport is operated by the Group’s wholly owned subsidiary, Cathay Pacific Services Limited (CPSL). Cargo Clan caught up with Mark Watts as he settles into his new role as Chief Operating Officer for CPSL.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’ve worked for the Cathay Pacific Group for 16 years across a wide variety of functions, including sales, procurement, operations and employee relations, usually on the commercial side of the business. Before joining Cathay I worked in inflight entertainment and communications (for the then publishers of Cargo Clan), and funnily enough, Cathay was always my customer. So although I’ve worked in Cathay for 16 years, I’ve worked with Cathay for well over 20 years!
What is your previous experience with Cargo?
One of my first roles at Cathay was as Head of IT Procurement and we worked on a number of Cathay Cargo projects, including the IT systems for the Cathay Cargo Terminal. That was when the terminal was still in the planning and design phase, so you could say I’ve been involved with the terminal right from the very beginning!
More recently when I worked in Flight Crew Relations, I got to see first-hand just how dedicated and professional Cathay Pacific’s freighter flight crew are. I continue to be in awe of the professionalism of all Cathay’s pilots and the way they have handled the challenges of the ever-changing rules and restrictions to keep cargo flying;
What are your first impressions in your new role?
We have a great team of seasoned professionals who really understand the cargo terminal business and who also always look at things from the customer’s perspective. This is a key reason for our exceptional operational performance; our service levels really are second to none. We moved more than 125 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines through the terminal last year and our end-to-end processing time is down to six minutes for imports and four minutes for transhipments, which is really impressive.