Cathay Pacific Continues To Improve

Cathay Pacific continues to see its situation improve as the company releases its traffic figures for May 2024.

The Cathay Group was pleased to reveal that in the first five months of the year, the mainline Cathay Pacific and HK Express surpassed 10 million passengers. The total figure reached was 11.2 million, a significant improvement over recent years that has seen the Group in turmoil.

May was celebrated, however, with an 18.4% increase year over year in passengers carried, with Cathay Pacific transporting 1.67 million passengers. Furthermore, revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) also saw solid increases year over year, amounting to 20.8%.

Cathay Pacific says load factors decreased during the month by 4.8% to 80.3%. However, this shouldn’t necessarily be alarming. As the airline continues to rebuild and expand its network, fluctuations in the overall load factors across the network are expected.

May capped off a highly successful first five months, during which nearly double the number of passengers were carried compared to the same period one year prior.

Cathay Cargo increased by more than 10% in May, with 121,000 tonnes transported across the network. Revenue tonne-kilometres or RFTKs also increased year over year. Similarly to the passenger network, the cargo load factor decreased to 59.4%, a 2.1 percentage point decrease.

Cathay says it experienced some strong growth from Hong Kong during May, extending to the mainland China and Taiwan Region. There was also a visible increase in special cargo, with movements such as seafood, consumer products and electronics all present.

Looking ahead, Cathay Pacific is continuing to target the rebuilding of its business. It has now reached another milestone of 80% of its pre-pandemic passenger flights. The hope is that by the first quarter of 2025, they’ll hit the 100% mark as they continue adding to their network.

Already in 2024, the company has highlighted the addition of Chennai, Colombo, Barcelona, and more to its network, while HK Express has also seen service increases across the board.

Cathay Group says that there are now scheduled flights to more than 80 destinations worldwide across its two passenger airlines, rising to 90 next year. Markets such as Riyadh, recently announced, will help propel the airline forward.