Cathay Pacific Group contributed more than HK$6 million at Philippines typhoon relief

The Cathay Pacific Group announced that the value of its contribution to help victims of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in November, has topped HK$6 million.

Soon after the storm, the Group launched an inflight appeal together with a staff appeal to raise funds to help the ongoing relief effort. The company pledged that it would match, dollar-for-dollar, all staff donations. In total, HK$5 million in cash was raised through the company’s appeal. Some HK$1.4 million of this came from passenger donations, collected through the Change for Good inflight fundraising programme between 19 and 30 November, which will be used to support the typhoon relief work of the Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF. The HK$3.6 million contributed through staff donations and company matching will be donated to the Hong Kong Red Cross and other Red Cross Societies overseas.

In addition to the cash donation, Group staff contributed more than 600 hours of their own time to run donation booths at Cathay Pacific’s headquarters in Hong Kong. The Group also donated more than 9,000 inflight sleep suits and blankets, offered more than 500kg of free excess baggage allowance and around 20,000kg of free freight shipments to relief organisations, with a total value of around HK$1.2 million. The sleep suits and blankets were donated to the Philippine National Red Cross Society for distribution in the affected areas.