Cathay Pacific Group achieved an important milestone of carrying more than two million passengers in a month for the first time since the pandemic. Cathay Pacific carried a total of 1,744,374 passengers last month, an increase of 693.8% compared with July 2022. The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 421.6% year on year. Passenger load factor increased by 16 percentage points to 89.3%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 328.2% year on year.
In the first seven months of 2023, the number of passengers carried increased by 1,622% against 818.9% increase in capacity and a 1,149% increase in RPKs, as compared with the same period for 2022.
The airline carried 115,729 tonnes of cargo last month, an increase of 14.9% compared with July 2022.
Commenting on the milestone, 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% 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% load factor,” Lau added.
Going ahead, the group expects that strong travel demand seen in July will continue through the rest of the summer peak in August. The Group has reached close to 60% of pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity levels and is on track to achieve the target of 70% covering 80 destinations by the end of this year.
As an additional update following the group’s payment of the HK$1.5 billion deferred dividend on the HK$19.5 billion preference shares held by the Hong Kong SAR Government in June and announcement of its intention to pay all future preference shares dividends as they fall due, the Group has paid the latest dividend of HK$292.5 million due on the preference shares on 14 August 2023.