Union demands face-to-face meeting with top Hong Kong aviation official over security

Cabin crew federation presses for answers after exceptional left luggage delivery made for a daughter of Leung Chun-ying

CY Leung left luggage saga

Ernest Kao

Published: 3:45pm, 2 May 2016

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A cabin crew union has reiterated its demands to discuss pressing government aviation security issues with the city’s top civil aviation official as a left luggage controversy continues to dog Hong Kong’s chief executive and his family.

The Hong Kong Cabin Crew Federation said the Civil Aviation Department needed to clarify whether there had been any deviation from standard security protocol in handling lost and found baggage.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, the union said the department also had to explain whether its security standards were at odds with the Security Bureau’s 2008 “Hong Kong Aviation Security Programme”, which stated baggage screening should be carried out in the presence of the passenger it belongs to.

Controversy arose last month after it was revealed a piece of hand luggage belonging to Leung Chung-yan, a daughter of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, was specially delivered to her in a restricted area of Hong Kong International Airport as she was boarding a flight to San Francisco in March.

The Airport Authority later said in its report that discretion for “courtesy delivery” services were made on occasion. But little detail has been provided as to which people were eligible.

The union said director-general for aviation Norman Lo Shung-man needed to clarify statements he previously made in the Legislative Council, namely that no rules were broken and that such practices would “continue to happen in the future”.

Federation general secretary Carol Ng Man-yee said the union requested to meet with Lo and was “still corresponding with the department on the time of the meeting”. She stressed the group would only accept a meeting with Lo and not with any other official.

The union also said Monday it was speaking to its legal advisers and that a judicial review of the matter was “not a move they wanted to have to take” but was “not being ruled out” either.

The department had previously told the union Lo was out of town on a business trip and had suggested a meeting with other officials.

Union member Rebecca Sy said the department’s refusal to provide answers compromised the city’s aviation security at a time when major international airports around the world had been targets of terror attacks.

“They cannot keep twisting the hard facts of aviation security protocol,” she said.

Sy also pointed to an unusual case in March in which a man dressed in a pilot’s outift tried to enter the cockpit of a Dragonair flight from Hong Kong to Penang. He was detained.

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