page_title: Duncan Bluck
section_title: Cathay Pacific career
hierarchical_section_title: Duncan Bluck / Cathay Pacific career
caption_attribution_description: English: Convair 880 VR-HGG of Cathay Pacific at Miami Airport in 1975
context_page_description: Duncan Robert Yorke Bluck, CBE was a British businessman. He joined the Butterfield & Swire in 1948 and became the commercial manager and subsequently the managing director of the Cathay Pacific Airways in the 1960s and 70s. Under his managership, the Cathay Pacific expanded extensively its airline's network and transformed into a major international carrier. From 1981 to 84, he was the chairman of the Swire Group in Hong Kong. He had also been chairman of Hong Kong Tourist Association and chairman of the British Tourist Authority and English Tourist Board after he returned to England in 1984.
context_section_description: A carerr-changing opportunity came in 1953, when Bluck was sent to Bangkok to open a new branch for the Cathay Pacific Airways. At the time, the fleet consisted of only two DC-3s and one DC-4 Skymaster. The DC-4 operated the Hong Kong-Bangkok-Singapore route five times a day and a weekly Hong Kong-Bangkok-Calcutta flight.
  In 1954, Bluck took up the position of commercial manager of the Cathay Pacific at the age of 27, the airline's most senior non-engineering post. During his spell, he was able to acquire the northbound routes at the time the routes from Hong Kong to Mainland China, Taiwan and Japan were given by the government to Hong Kong Airways (HKA), a subsidiary of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). The HKA had to sellits fleet and chartered out its traffic rights to the American Northwest Airlines after it lost the Mainland market. Bluck foresaw the potential of the Japanese market, and thus he asked for the northbound rights from the government, unless HKA flew its own planes. In 1959, the BOAC swapped HKA for a part of the shares in the Cathay Pacific as predicted by Bluck, and thus opened the Japanese and Taiwanese market to Cathay.
  At the time the boss of the Swire Group, Jock Swire was knocked out of the Hong Kong-Sydney route by Qantas, the Australian state carrier. Bluck belonged to the pro-expansion lobby with Bill Knowles, opposed to the anti-expansionists including Jock Browne and John Browne. John Bremridge, the managing director held a middle position but leaned towards Jock-like caution. Bluck gave a vision of global expansionism in a report he wrote after a five-week tour in North America in 1961, pointing out the potential business opportunity in the United States.
  In 1962, Cathay Pacific acquired its first jet aircraft, the Convair 880M and formed a joint venture air catering company with the Peninsula Group. The partnership provided the impetus to take on catering for other airlines which eventually led to the founding of the Cathay Pacific Catering Services. In April 1964, Bluck joined the Board of the Cathay Pacific Airways.
  In 1968, Bluck was sent to Nassau to take over as chairman of the Bahamas Airways, which Swire in conjunction with P&O and Blue Funnel Line acquired from the BOAC. During his two-year chairmanship, the airways crumpled financially as the Bahamian government exclusively licensed the national carrier BAL to fly long haul routes. Swire had to put the airline into voluntary liquidation as a result.
caption: Convair 880M, Cathay Pacific's first jet aircraft.
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