Flight attendants laid off during pandemic find new career as high-flyers in Hong Kong’s booming insurance industry
- Their skills have proved a perfect match for the city’s insurance giants, who have been busily recruiting as the industry weathers the pandemic
- AIA, Prudential and Manulife have been snapping up former cabin crew made redundant by Cathay Pacific and its regional carrier
Because Lunar New Year is typically the peak season for air travel in China, they would usually be busy serving passengers meals and drinks at about 40,000 feet. But as the Year of the Ox gets under way many former cabin crew now have their feet firmly on the ground, having reinvented themselves as high-flyers in a very different arena – insurance sales.
Their training and skills have proved a perfect match for the city’s insurance giants, who have been busily recruiting as the industry ploughs unscathed through the turbulence of the pandemic. Many have found themselves far better off financially too.
That contributed to a surge in Hong Kong’s unemployment rate to a 16-year high of 6.6 per cent, with 250,000 people out of work as the fourth wave of the coronavirus sent the city spiralling into its worst recession on record.
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Cathay Pacific Airways announces its largest job cuts in history
