Customer privacy notice - European Appendix

Cathay Pacific Customer Privacy Notice - European Appendix

This Appendix applies if you are based in the European Economic Area (the EEA) during your interactions with us (other than where you are in the EEA solely for travel purposes).

1. Processing of special categories of Personal Data

1.1 We will collect and handle sensitive Personal Data¹, for example, when we handle requests for special medical or access assistance or your specific dietary requirements that may indicate your religious beliefs, e.g. halal or kosher meal selections.

1.2 We will typically ask you for your consent when collecting and handling this type of Personal Data, unless we are otherwise permitted to process such Personal Data under European data protection law (EU DP Law) or the laws of the EU member state in which you are based.

2. Why we collect your data, and who we disclose it to

2.1 The legal basis or “grounds” for our use of your Personal Data are set out below, as required under EU DP Law. In the table below, we have linked each purpose mentioned in section 4 of our Privacy Notice to the relevant legal ground/s:

3. Legal grounds for use of Personal Data

3.1 The legal grounds for our use of Personal Data are as follows:

(a) Consent: where you have consented to our use of your Personal Data. You may withdraw your consent to the use of your Personal Data by contacting us as set out in paragraph [8.4] of the Privacy Notice.

(b) Contract performance: where we are required to collect and handle your Personal Data in order to provide you with the services that we have contractually agreed to provide to you, e.g. where you have booked a flight with us or the use of our freight service.

(c) Legal obligation: where we need to use your Personal Data to comply with our legal obligations.

(d) Vital interests: where we need to process your Personal Data in order to protect the vital interests of you or another natural person, e.g. where you require urgent assistance.

(e) Public interest: where we need to process your Personal Data in order to carry out a task that is in the public interest.

(f) Legitimate interests: where we have a legitimate interest in using your information. We will only rely on this legal ground if we consider that our interest in using your Personal Data for the relevant purpose is not outweighed by any interests that you may have, or any prejudice that you may suffer, from the relevant use of your Personal Data.
 

The legal grounds for our use of the sensitive categories of Personal Data are: :

(g) Consent: where you have explicitly consented to our use of your Personal Data. You may withdraw your consent to the use of your Personal Data by contacting us as set out in paragraph [8.4] of the Privacy Notice.

(h) Vital interest: where we need to process your Personal Data in order to protect the vital interests of you or another natural person where you or the other person is physically or legally incapable of giving consent.

(i) Legal claims: where your Personal Data is necessary for us to establish, exercise of defend any legal claims.

(j) Substantial public interest: where we need to process your Personal Data for reasons of substantial public interest set out in EU law or the laws of the member state in which you are based.

(k) Public interest in area of public health: where we need to process your Personal Data for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, such as protecting against serious cross-border threats to health, set out in EU law or the laws of the member state in which you are based.
 

4. Profiling

4.1 In connection with our marketing activities, we analyse some of the information that we collect about our customers (together with information about customers that we collect from our loyalty and other partners) to determine what offers are most likely to be of interest to different categories of customers in different circumstances and at different times. We call this the creation of “segments”. To do this, we combine Personal Data that we have collected from customers directly together with Personal Data that we have collected from our affiliates and other partners, including Asia Miles, about our customers’ purchase history and interactions with us. From time to time, we will assess the Personal Data that we hold about you in order to assign you to a particular segment. We will use the segment that you have been assigned to in order to tailor our marketing communications to include offers and content that are relevant to you.

4.2 You have the right to opt out of our direct marketing, and the underlying analysis of your Personal Data that we use to tailor the direct marketing that we send to you, at any time. You can exercise this right, by contacting us in accordance with section 8.4 of the Privacy Notice.

5. Our decision-making processes

5.1 In connection with our business, we will use your Personal Data to make various decisions about you and your eligibility to access our services, to prevent abusive use of our services, to ensure security of our systems, or to detect fraud. Some of these decisions may be taken on an automated basis including, by matching your Personal Data against information in certain risk models that we have created based on the behaviour of other individuals and using your Personal Data to further enhance such models.
 

6. Export outside the EEA

6.1 Your Personal Data may be accessed by staff or suppliers, transferred, and/or stored outside the EEA, including to countries which may have a lower level of data protection than  under EU DP law.

6.2 We must comply with specific rules when we transfer Personal Data from inside the EEA to outside the EEA. When we do this, we will use appropriate safeguards to protect any Personal Data being transferred. 

6.3 We will transfer your Personal Data subject to European Commission approved contractual terms that impose different data protection obligations directly on the recipient, or as otherwise permitted under EU DP Law.

6.4 Please contact us as set out in paragraph [8.4] of the Privacy Notice if you would like to see a copy of the specific safeguards we apply to the export of your Personal Data.
 

7. Retention period

Our retention periods for Personal Data are based on business needs and legal requirements. We will retain your Personal Data for as long as is necessary for the processing purpose(s) for which it was collected and any other permitted linked purpose. For example, we may retain: (i) certain transaction details (e.g. flight history) and correspondence until the time limit for claims arising from the transaction with us has expired (which is typically between 6 to 10 years after the relevant transaction occurred, and in some cases much less than this); or (ii) certain data to comply with regulatory requirements regarding the retention of such data. Where Personal Data is no longer needed, we either irreversibly anonymise the data (in which case we may further retain and use the anonymised data) or securely destroy the data.
 

8. Your rights

8.1 In addition to the paragraph 8 of the Privacy Notice, in certain circumstances, you may have the rights under EU DP Law to ask us to:

(a) provide you with further details on how we use and process your Personal Data;

(b) delete Personal Data we no longer have grounds to process; and

(c) restrict how we process your Personal Data whilst we consider an inquiry you have raised.

Please note that we will not charge a fee when we deal with your requests in the exercise of the above rights.

8.2 In addition, under certain conditions, you have the right to:

(a) where processing is based on consent, withdraw the consent; and

(b) object to any processing of Personal Data that we process on the "legitimate interests" or "public interests" grounds, unless our reasons for the underlying processing outweighs your interests, rights and freedoms.

(c) object to direct marketing (including any profiling for such purposes) at any time.

8.3 You may exercise these rights by contacting us at the contact details in section [8.4] of the Privacy Notice. Please note that we will not charge a fee when we deal with your requests in the exercise of these rights.

8.4 Customers requesting to exercise their rights or needing more information or clarification on specific Personal Data usage are welcome to contact us at dpo@cathaypacific.com or write to us at the below mailing addresses:

The Data Protection Officer
Cathay Pacific Airways Limited
6th Floor Cathay Pacific City
8 Scenic Road
Hong Kong International Airport
Lantau
Hong Kong

8.5 These rights are subject to certain exemptions to safeguard the public interest (e.g. the prevention or detection of crime) and our interests (e.g. the maintenance of legal privilege). We will aim to respond to requests within 30 days.

8.6 If we are unable to resolve an inquiry or a complaint, you have the right to contact the data protection regulator in the country in which you are based.

^{NOTE 1} Under European data protection law (EU DP Law), certain categories of Personal Data are considered particularly sensitive and therefore as needing additional protection. These categories include information about health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership or your sexual orientation and genetic and biometric data. Information concerning criminal convictions and offences is also viewed as sensitive under EU DP Law.