REGIONAL REPORT
Fifteen years in the Studio by RICK LUNDSTROM
division, located at Cathay City complex and at Cathay Pacific Catering Services. Themes and brands have been important to the Cathay Pacific Group. In the past, the airline touted its Best Chinese Food in the Air. Now the two airlines will be each working to maintain their separate themes and each airline will have its own approach. Dragonair will stress a “Contemporary Chinese” elements, while Cathay Pacific will be “Contemporary Asian.”
A studio is born
A new look for sister airlines: Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon
Cathay Pacific’s StudioCX, one of the first branded IFE systems, notes a significant anniversary as the airline itself marks 70 years in operation and a new brand image for its sister airline, Dragonair
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athay Pacific Group is celebrating its 70th birthday in the Chinese Year of the Monkey with new branding; and not left out are the latest improvements is its inflight entertainment system, known since 2001 as Studio CX. As the airline extends its offering of inflight programming to flights that include short-haul and long-haul, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Dragonair will be, from later this year, known as Cathay Dragon. In addition to a new logo and livery, the airline that has been the Cathay Pacific Group’s link from Mainland China to its Hong Kong hub will be part of a more seamless brand seen most prominently by passengers as the iconic brushwing logo rendered in distinctive red on Cathay Dragon. The first of the aircraft with the new livery, an A330-300 was set to fly in April. Dragonair carried more than 7 million passengers last year, most of them from Mainland China to Hong Kong International Airport with a combination of widebody and narrow-body aircraft. “Cathay Dragon is a brand that will be recognizably part of the Cathay Pacific Group for our customers from different parts of the world,” said Cathay Pacific’s Chief Executive Ivan Chu, in the January 28 announcement of the rebranding. “The rebranding will enable us to capture the
fast-growing passenger flows across the two carriers by creating a more seamless travel experience.” Cathay Dragon’s Chief Executive Officer, Algernon Yau promised the airline would keep its sight on its regional passengers tastes and desires. Of particular interest will be the Cathay Dragon inflight food offering that will include specialty Chinese and Asian dishes and popular Hong Kong snacks. Other changes in the food service component were on the operational side. Before the announcement, work was underway for the special year ahead that will add a number of elements to the airline’s important food service department that is now handled from one
Planners sat down in 2001 to give the airline an inflight entertainment system that would be a singular experience. At the time, Cathay Pacific used color-coded water droplets to represent separate entertainment categories: New Releases, Original Cut, Asian and assigning them with their own icon. “We came up with the name StudioCX based on the brand guideline at the time,” Daisy Chan, Product Manager of Entertainment and Media Sales at Cathay Pacific tells PAX International. “The idea of naming it a studio is to support the AVOD proposition where the passenger can treat the inflight entertainment systems as a studio and pick and choose their favorite entertainment.” As the system evolved, Chan said Cathay Pacific has removed the color references to give them a more modern genre and different names for easier reference. “We continue to modernize the collection and enrich them to provide a more comprehensive collection to our passengers, like Box Set, Trilogy and Theme for the Month,” Chan added. The modernization and revamping continued elsewhere in February. On the
Cathay Pacific Chief Executive Ivan Chu (third from left) and Dragonair Chief Executive Officer Algernon Yau (fourth from left) unveiled the new Cathay Dragon livery
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