Legend of Xiangjiang Tycoon

Before this, Schjoker was unaware of the existence of Cathay Pacific. It is small in size and has a small number of aircraft, only one aircraft, providing passenger and cargo charter services from Hong Kong to the mainland and Southeast Asia.

At that time, there were already several major airlines in Hong Kong, and Cathay Pacific was far from being able to compete with these air kings.

The three bosses of Cathay Pacific, two Americans and one Austrian, are all former military personnel. One of the Flying Tigers who participated in General Chennault during World War II, he is most proud of is opening up the air route from Chongqing to India and flying over the Himalayas.

In June 1947, Ge Lianghong succeeded Yang Muqi as the governor of Hong Kong. Ge Lianghong is the one who has made outstanding achievements and has the longest term of office among the successive governors of Hong Kong, and is widely praised by people from all walks of life in Huayang.

Ge Lianghong's work is very in-depth. Soon after he took office, he began to visit various companies and had extensive contacts with people from all walks of life in Hong Kong.

At the Hong Kong Governor's Office, Swire Pacific's senior class Shiyoke asked bluntly: "Are you satisfied with Cathay Pacific? I believe you are afraid to take a local charter flight, but would rather take a flight from a foreign airline."

"I know Mr. Governor would say something like this, and I can say that you are not satisfied with Cathay Pacific. There is competition and there is development. London has Imperial Airlines and Overseas Airlines; Shanghai has China Civil Aviation and Central Airlines; In the beginning, there were as many as a dozen or so in New York, and the fittest survived and died on their own.”

"No, no." Ge Lianghong interrupted Schjoker: "Hong Kong is a small place and cannot be compared with those world metropolises. Do you want to urge the government to amend the laws? No, it is completely impossible! Taikoo has never had it. The performance of the aviation industry. The government will not favor Swire, nor will it be sued by Cathay Pacific.”

Speaking to Reuters reporters, Sir Sjörk recalled: "I went to the Governor's House and the Chief Secretary's office several times and the result was that Swire's hopes of setting up an independent airline were completely dashed.

Although the government is dissatisfied with the status quo of Cathay Pacific, it has turned a deaf ear with a positive and non-intervention attitude, claiming that Cathay Pacific has been developing steadily and there is no fault.

Many officials are worried that Hong Kong's aviation industry is controlled by the Americans, but that's about it.

"It should be noted that the general psychology of the British after the war, the United States became the world hegemony and replaced the British position, the British felt lost, and the psychology of revival was very strong. Therefore, some of my friends in the government suggested to Cathay Pacific in a private name, It was rejected by arrogant Americans when Swire Pacific Co., Ltd. participated in the cooperation. This situation did not change until the air crash of the Miss Macau."

Miss Macau is a Pan American Airlines flight to and from Hong Kong and Macau. It is a twin-engine amphibious aircraft manufactured by the American Wright-Martin Company. The Hong Kong-Macau route was opened in 1935. After the fall of Hong Kong, it was suspended and resumed on April 9, 1948, with a voyage of about 20 minutes and a passenger capacity of 23 people. The flight time is short, and the plane can make an emergency landing at the sea; very popular with passengers.

At 6:00 pm on July 16, 1948, Miss Macau flew from Macau to Hong Kong and lost contact with the ground 8 minutes after takeoff. The plane crashed in the waters of Jiuzhou Ocean. Among the 23 passengers and 4 crew members, only the passenger Huang Yuwen survived, and the rest were buried at the bottom of the sea.

This was the largest air disaster in the history of Hong Kong aviation, which shocked the province, Hong Kong, Macau and the world. At the time, it was widely believed that amphibious aircraft were the safest means of carrying passengers in the air.

After the incident, people regarded the flight as a dangerous journey, and the front door of Kai Tak Airport was neglected, and the airlines suffered heavy losses. Cathay Pacific's reputation is not as good as that of major airlines, and it has set a record of no passengers on flights to and from Yangcheng and Shanghai.

Cathay Pacific immediately fell into a financial crisis. In this case, Cathay Pacific absorbed Swire as a shareholder to obtain cash to maintain operations.

The truth about the crash of the Miss Macau number will soon be revealed. Newspaper reports of a mechanical failure were overturned and the crash was man-made.

The survivor, Huang Yuwen, was one of the hijackers. He and three other co-criminals, Zhao Riming, Zhao Changyao, and Zhao Sancai, followed a passenger carrying thousands of taels of gold to board the plane.

After takeoff, the criminal wanted to hijack the plane to Zhongshan Pingsha Airport, but the pilot and passengers resisted, and the criminal shot and threatened him. The pilot was shot and the plane lost control and plunged to the bottom of the sea.

The culprit, Huang Yuwen, was at the tail of the plane and escaped when the plane crashed into the sea, but broke his thigh. The Macau police made a false confession to Huang, and Huang confessed to the hijacking.

The cause of the crash was disclosed to the media, and the credibility of air passenger transportation has been restored, and the number of passengers has slowly recovered, but the airlines are still not very prosperous.

To make matters worse, on December 20 of the same year, AVIC's Air Overlord flew from Shanghai to Hong Kong and crashed near Huobaizhou in the East China Sea of ​​Hong Kong, killing more than 30 people on board.

After the tragedy, passengers who had already booked tickets refunded their tickets one after another, and the airlines that had not recovered their vitality were severely damaged. According to the investigation, the crash of the Air Overlord was due to a mechanical failure.

The Air Overlord was known as one of the most advanced aircraft at the time, which hit airlines too hard, as you can imagine. 1948 was the most unlucky year in Hong Kong aviation history.

Swire's acquisition of Cathay Pacific is a blessing or a curse, and the fashion is unknown at the time.

At board meetings in London and Hong Kong, many directors accused Schjocker of sloppy behavior. Schjocker recalled: "The pressure was really high at the time. Although I firmly believed that the aviation industry would have amazing development, I had no bottom in my heart for how long this burden would take."

The most profitable industry after the war was maritime transportation. The dock, port affairs, and fleet became the cornucopia of Swire Pacific, and aviation was not very optimistic at that time. Jardine Matheson and other major foreign firms have no attempt to set foot in the aviation industry.

Nonetheless, competition in Hong Kong's aviation industry is fierce. Cathay Pacific, which belongs to the dwarfs, can only stand behind in the face of air bullies such as Britain, the United States and France.

The reason why Schjocker dared to pick up Cathay Pacific is because he sees the advantages of local companies on routes, and foreign companies will be restricted by corresponding laws when opening routes. "Since I have taken over Cathay Pacific, I have to run it well, and I can't waste this advantage," Schjocker said.

On the same route, the flight of different companies, who will prosper and who will decline, is entirely up to the passengers.

Schjocker firmly grasps security management and service management. He often talks to employees about the dangers of his first flight, warning them that safety and service are the lifeblood of the company.

Models are clearly a crucial factor in the rise and fall of the company. At that time, Douglas Corporation of the United States was the leader in the aviation industry. The DC3 and DC4 military aircraft made a big splash in World War II. After the war, Doslas was rapidly commercialized, and these two models became flying stars from the postwar to the early 1950s.

In 1949, Cathay Pacific purchased 4 Douglas regular flights as important routes.

In 1952, the United Kingdom launched the world's first civil jet DH106 Comet, and on May 2 of the same year, it completed a long-distance passenger flight between London and Johannesburg (South Africa). This marked the dawn of the civil jet era, with jetliners that exhilarated the aviation industry with their speed and range.

Schjoker gets a loan from HSBC and plans to return to England to order a comet style. He finally returned empty-handed, for no other reason than his indecision. He took advice from experts who believed that jet technology was not yet fully mature, and it was best to wait and see for a while.

In 1954, two Comet planes crashed for purely technical reasons. The comet style comes to an end, and Cathay Pacific escapes doom.

The United Kingdom also launched the Viscount 708 in 1953. It uses a traditional propeller-turbine engine, four engines, and the two models carry 47 and 75 passengers respectively. The comet is short-lived, and the viscount is thriving.

In the mid to late 1950s, the Viscount 708 was the main aircraft of Cathay Pacific. "Cathay Pacific's style has always been stable, but stability is not complacent. To win passengers, it must catch up with the new trend of the world aviation industry. The symbol of the trend is the aircraft type."

In the 1950s, Lockheed, Douglas, McDonnell, Boeing and other aircraft companies successively launched military and civilian jets with reliable performance. Boeing is the latecomer.

On October 26, 1958, Pan American Airlines, the world's aviation giant, was the first to use the Boeing 707 on the North Atlantic route.

Pan Am has always been a leader in the world aviation industry, and the aircraft recognized by Pan Am is equivalent to putting on a golden signboard. The Boeing 707 has a long-standing reputation. From the 1960s to the present, the Boeing series has dominated the world aviation industry.

In 1964, Cathay Pacific Airways was split into Cathay Pacific Airways Limited and Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company Limited. The largest shareholder is the Swire Group controlled by the Shi Huai Ya family.

After nearly 20 years of miserable operation, Cathay Pacific has steadily developed into a large airline. In the first few years of Swire Pacific taking over Cathay Pacific, it was often loss-making or unprofitable, and then gradually made a profit. By the 1980s, the surplus of Cathay Pacific, HAECO, and aviation food industry accounted for the entire Swire Group's annual surplus. half of the profit. Cathay Pacific has become a veritable cornucopia.

In 1965, Swire Pacific acquired a US-funded company – HongKongBottlersFederalInc.

The company holds the exclusive rights to Coca-Cola's bottling business in Hong Kong. At that time, the annual production of HongKong Bottlers was 104 million bottles.

In 1974, the company changed its name to SwireBottlers, when its annual production reached 180 million bottles, and the company also ranked among the top 50 cola bottlers in the world. Today, Swire & Co. is one of the largest Coca-Cola bottlers in Asia and the United States.

For Swire, the 1970s was a time of rapid change.

In the early 1970s, with the rapid development of container shipping, the growth of Taikoo Dockyard could not be accommodated by its location on Hong Kong Island, so the company decided to close the dock.

In 1972, Taikoo Dockyard merged with Whampoa Dockyard, which is the oldest in Hong Kong, China, to form Hong Kong United Dockyard (United Dockyard), based in Tsing Yi.

At that time, Swire Pacific had already begun to participate in the development of the Kwai Chung New International Container Terminal in Hong Kong. In the same year, it also acquired an equity interest in Modern Terminals, an advanced container handling facility.

Taikoo Dockyard & Engineeringpany, which was listed on the Hong Kong stock market as early as 1959, was renamed Swire Pacific Limited at this time.

It is a ready-made holding company that holds all of Swire's business in Hong Kong. The emergence of Swire Pacific symbolized the birth of the modern Swire Group, and also marked the end of Butterfield's long-forgotten rights and interests in the company. The word Butterfield in the English company name was also changed to Swire to highlight the corporate image of the group.

In 1972, Taikoo Sugar also closed its refining plant and concentrated on sugar products and packaging. In the mid-1970s, Swire Properties newly established Swire Properties, which is responsible for real estate development and management, and began to build Taikoo Shing on a large piece of land vacated after the demolition of the docks and sugar refineries in the eastern district of Hong Kong Island, bringing a whole new dimension to this area. of the urban area.

Taikoo Shing is the first private housing estate in Hong Kong. Together with the retail/office complex at Cityplaza, its basement car park was built on the site of the Taikoo Dry Dock. It is the first well-known commercial project developed and managed by Swire Properties. Similar projects have also Including Pacific Place, Taikoo Place and Festival Walk, bringing a new interpretation to the development of commercial buildings in Hong Kong.

Cathay Pacific added its first long-haul Boeing 707 to its fleet in 1973, and the company has grown rapidly in the following decade, introducing a series of L1011 three-star wide-body aircraft and acquiring its first Boeing 747-200 in 1979 Jet Jumbo airliner, quickly strengthen the company's strength. The following year, Cathay Pacific launched its first direct flight to London, becoming a truly international airline.

Revolutionary changes in the 1970s also included other new developments for Swire Pacific, most notably the establishment of the offshore oil support company Swire Pacific Developments in 1975, and the purchase of Hong Kong Air Cargo in 1976. Equity in Station Limited (Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminal).

During this period, the parent company Swire Pacific also tried to invest in the offshore oil business, acquiring SwireEPD, a supplier specializing in North Sea transportation equipment, in 1979.

The British Swire Group is also involved in Australia's land transport and material handling business, acquiring Tra in 1971, as well as buying stakes in Papua New Guinea trading company Steamships Tradings and Glasgow-based tea trader James;.

In the late 1970s, Swire's first investment in the United States was acquired by Swire Properties to acquire some real estate rights in Miami, and Swire's first acquisition of Coca-Cola's Salt Lake City bottling franchise.

In 1982, Swire Pacific Group incorporated UesCe, a refrigerated cargo storage company, as its wholly-owned subsidiary.

Swire is a major commercial landowner in New South Wales and Southern Queensland ~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Swire also started investing in Australia's livestock industry in the 1980s. In 1983, the British Swire Group and the associated company James; jointly acquired a half stake in ClydeAgriculture.

Since then, Clyde's business has expanded from cotton to wool and beef, while its land holdings have grown twenty-fold, covering more than two million acres in New South Wales and Queensland, including the most famous land in Australia's history. part of the livestock industry.

During this period, Swire Pacific of Hong Kong continued to develop its trading business, acquiring the Marathon sporting goods chain in 1983.

In the same year, Swire began to get involved in environmental services and waste disposal business, which later became important business areas of Swire.

Swire has successively formed a partnership with BrowningFerrisIA; and has become the main contractor of waste treatment projects in Hong Kong, operating a number of landfills and providing waste transshipment services, including the use of a number of small container ships designed and operated by Swire's associate company HUD Marine. Shipping waste to outlying islands in Hong Kong.