Cathay Pacific carried more than 1.7 million passengers in July

Cathay Pacific’s traffic figures for July show that airline carried a total of 1,744,374 passengers last month, an increase of 693.8 per cent compared with July 2022.

This number combined with HK Express, another low cost airline in Hong Kong that is part of the Cathay Group, means the group has surpassed the milestone of carrying more than two million passengers in a month for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic.

July’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) for Cathay Pacific increased 421.6 per cent year-on-year. Passenger load factor also rose 16 percentage points to 83.9 per cent, while capacity – measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs) – increased by 328.2 per cent year-on-year.

Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau said: “July marks the beginning of the traditional summer peak for passenger travel, and we are very pleased to see that demand has been strong. We continued to add back more capacity for our customers – 11 per cent more compared with June – primarily on our North America, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia services catering to the rising demand for visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and leisure travel.

“Long-haul flights both to and from Hong Kong were especially popular in the first half of the month among VFR travellers. Subsequently, with the start of the school holidays in mid-July, there was a substantial increase in demand for popular short-haul destinations around Asia. All this resulted in July having a near 90 per cent load factor.”

In the first seven months of 2023, the number of passengers carried increased by 1,622 per cent against a 818.9 per cent increase in capacity and a 1,149 per cent increase in RPKs, as compared with the same period for 2022.

“Looking ahead, we expect that the strong travel demand seen in July will continue through the rest of the summer peak in August,” said Lau. “We continue to make good progress in our journey to rebuild the Cathay Group and connectivity at our home hub and, as a Group comprising Cathay Pacific and HK Express, we are now close to 60 per cent of pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity levels. We are on track to achieve our target of 70 per cent covering 80 destinations by the end of this year, and we are confident of reaching 100 per cent by the end of 2024.”