Cargolux - HNCA: Unions relieved but vigilant

My Orchids. Phalaneopsis "Inaugural Flight". Photo ET

Cargolux - HNCA: Unions relieved but vigilant

The antecedents are well known: HNCA, an economic development agency of the Chinese Province of Henan is a shareholder of Cargolux. One of the main objectives is for Cargolux to develop flights between Luxembourg and the airport located at Zhengzhou.

So far no flight took place. In an almost comical event, the Luxembourg Minister of Transportation had traveled to Zhengzhou to welcome the first CV flight on April 24th, the aircraft baptized "City of Grevenmacher", zealously painted over as "City of Zhenzhou".  That didn't help and the Minister waited in vain, as the flight was canceled due to unexpected authorization problems. These seem to be major, as the second attempt for the inaugural flight will be only on May 29th. If all goes well.

After that startling hiccup, another piece of news trickled in, that the airport of Zhengzhou was actively pursuing partnerships with the airports of Hahn and Leipzig. Unions were rightfully alarmed at this second breakdown in the relationship, as there was no prior knowledge about this, though one of the Chinese signatories is now a Cargolux Board member. Was Hahn going to drain away business from Luxembourg with Chinese support, though we already expect that the venture will be losing money?

Minister Bausch was able to assuage the Union's fear. The Hahn agreement was qualified as only a PR stunt of a loser airport hanging in the ropes. The agreement is merely talking about cargo flights increasing from 2 to 4 flights a week. But it is rather an MOU than a contract. There would be no incidence on the Luxembourg airport's operations. None at all.

The Minister agreed that there has been some miscommunication. We already understood this,  as one can imagine that a Green member of the government would not gratuitously increase his carbon footprint by traveling to China for an event that didn't take place.

We haven't heard yet why the Zhengzhou airport officials didn't sign a similar agreement with the Luxembourg airport. Even if it were only an empty MOU, it would have been nice. Why not sign it when Mr. Bausch was over there? He would not have come back empty handed. We all know that appearance in politics counts.

We also don't yet know if another Luxembourg delegation  will travel again to Zhengzhou for the second attempt at the inaugural flight.