在线国产一区二区_成人黄色片在线观看_国产成人免费_日韩精品免费在线视频_亚洲精品美女久久_欧美一级免费在线观看

Number cruncher leads string of aviation firsts

Updated: 2015-12-07 08:02

By Emma Dai in Hong Kong(HK Edition)

  Print Mail Large Medium  Small 分享按鈕 0

 Number cruncher leads string of aviation firsts

Walter Dias is especially upbeat about United Airlines' Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which he calls "a game changer for aviation". He also has a watch list of about 50 cities on the Chinese mainland, as the carrier's survey has shown that the top long-haul destination for upwardly mobile Chinese is the US. Parker Zheng / China Daily

Before joining the aviation industry and flying all over the world, Walter Dias, the managing director for Greater China and Korea at United Airlines Inc, used to be an accountant. He was once a member of Pricewaterhouse, even before Coopers joined the Big Four audit firm.

However, the city boy who grew up outside New York found life in the office too boring anyway and decided to "see the world". He first joined the oil business in the 1980s, which sent him to "cool places that one wouldn't go for vacation". "I was in Sudan during the civil war," he recalled.

In 1987, Dias joined Continental Airlines, where his duty was to visit different divisions of the carrier and find out better processes to do the job. "I accepted the offer because it's a great way to understand how things work," he said.

This have-a-go spirit led him to open the company's first Hong Kong office in 2001, when the carrier launched the world's first nonstop flight between Hong Kong and New York. It was the longest commercial flight at that time - lasting about 16 hours - and the first to fly over the North Pole.

"It was an exciting time," Dias told China Daily. "It took us a good two years to prepare. No one had operated a commercial flight that long. And it was also the first try to negotiate for fly-over rights from both Russia and China."

Back then, Dias was supervising the sales team of Continental Micronesia, a wholly owned subsidiary of the US airline. The regional carrier, covering markets from South Korea to Southeast Asia and Australia, was headquartered in Guam, the strategic island in the western Pacific Ocean.

In 2005, when the Chinese mainland market finally opened up to foreign airlines under a World Trade Organization agreement, Dias set up Continental's first office in Beijing and a local team to support daily nonstop service between the Chinese capital and New York. The flight was its first direct Sino-US service since the signing of the WTO deal and was followed by a nonstop trans-Pacific service between Shanghai and New York four years later.

In 2008, Dias wrapped up 15 years of life in Guam and relocated to Hong Kong to "be closer to the customers". In 2010, Continental Airlines merged with United Airlines through a $3 billion stock-swap deal.

The new company, taking the name of the latter, is based in Chicago and started out as the world's largest airline in revenue passenger miles.

Dias, who first visited China in 1993, said his initial perception was that working in the country was "bureaucratic and difficult, with everything requiring to be chopped". But surprisingly, things have been "pretty easy".

"On the Chinese side, usually the approvals are relatively easy and fast, if all information is prepared properly," he said. "People at the CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China) are very professional. The Chinese authorities have been supportive and very efficient in saying yes or no. When there is a no, they usually tell us what is expected to fix it." Living a metropolitan life again, Dias finds himself settled quite comfortably in the "very international but also very local city" of Hong Kong and has fallen in love with dim sum. He praised the MTR transport system as "incredible" and airport services in the SAR as "unbelievable".

"People of Hong Kong may take some of the things the Hong Kong government does well for granted, because they have got used to it and think of it as normal. But compared with what we have in the US, Hong Kong has put a lot of resources together," he said.

Among the books on Dias' immediate reading list is On China by Henry Kissinger. "I haven't dived into it. But (I am expecting) history and maybe a bit more about the future," he said.

emmadai@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 12/07/2015 page9)

主站蜘蛛池模板: 日韩精品一区二区三区四区视频 | 九一免费国产 | 欧美色图一区 | 天堂欧美城网站 | 国产成人精品久久二区二区91 | 看a网站| 免费国产成人 | 欧美一级欧美三级在线观看 | 欧美一级h | 一区二区在线免费观看 | 涩婷婷| 精品色区 | 91久久国产 | 欧美.com| 久久亚洲国产精品 | 亚洲国产高清在线 | 日韩欧美在线观看视频网站 | 一区二区三区在线视频免费观看 | 亚洲成人第一区 | 久久人人爽人人爽人人片av不 | 成人在线视频免费观看 | 一区二区成人网 | 毛片在线看片 | 欧美精品免费在线 | 激情999| 国产拍揄自揄精品视频麻豆 | 欧美一区二区视频 | 国产日韩精品一区二区在线观看播放 | 欧美全黄 | 欧美一性一交 | 国产精品日本一区二区不卡视频 | 久久九九这里只有精品 | 日韩另类在线 | 美日韩一区二区 | 欧美一级特黄aaaaaaa色戒 | 国产精品美女久久久久久久久久久 | 在线观看日韩一区 | 成人不卡一区二区 | 免费看国产片在线观看 | 九九九久久国产免费 | 国产天堂一区二区三区 |