Cathay Pacific’s Comeback Continues

Cathay Pacific has published its traffic figures for October 2024, which show substantial improvements across the board following continued recovery efforts.

Just over 2 million passengers were carried last month, a 19.6% increase from the numbers recorded in October 2023.

Cathay Pacific has remained focused on improving its network, thus increasing service to existing markets and returning to ones that were axed during the pandemic.

This very rapid recovery, while long in the making, has allowed the Hong Kong-based carrier to see its results continue to improve steadily. It hopes this will continue well into 2025.

In October, revenue passenger kilometres (RPKS) also increased 19.1% year over year, while available seat kilometres (ASKs) increased 21.3% from October 2023.

The only drop was visible in passenger load factors, which experienced a 1.6-percentage-point drop, bringing the total to 83.1%. It isn’t uncommon to see decreases in overall passenger load factors when airlines are looking to increase their overall network rapidly.

With time, Cathay Pacific will want these numbers to continue growing to show steady demand across all passenger metrics; however, continued route evaluation will always take place to optimise the best available assets.

In 2024, the first ten months of the year highlighted some massive jumps across the board, with 18.5 million passengers carried across the first ten months of the year, a 27.4% jump from the same period one year prior.

Meanwhile, there were also major increases in the ASKs, which jumped to 32.7% and lastly, RPKs, which also jumped by 26.7%.

Cathay Talks Cargo Network

There were also increases for the Cathay Cargo network, with 142,000 tonnes, give or take, transported, representing a 14.3% increase from the same month one year prior.

The traditional cargo peak season continued in October, with tonnage 7% higher than the previous month and 14% above October last year. Our cargo business continued to perform well despite various seasonal holidays. This momentum was driven not only by demand from Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland, but also from our broader network, particularly the Americas.

Cargo revenue tonne-kilometres also increased from 2023, with cargo load factor jumping 0.8 percentage points up to 61.5%.

Looking Ahead At Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific is projecting strong Christmas travel demand, which will help propel results and see a successful year-end.

The Hong Kong-based carrier expects substantial demand in Japan, one of its top destinations. Furthermore, there’ll be inbound demand from North America, the United Kingdom and more, with people coming to Hong Kong to see family and friends.

Thanks to the launch of many new services, new destinations will form an important part of the airline’s future operations. Airline executives highlight flights to Cairns and a recent announcement that flights will resume to Hyderabad in 2025.