Cathay Pacific carried 36.3% more passengers in April 2025, compared with the same month a year prior, totalling 2.4 million.
The airline's load factor improved 4.9 percentage points to 86.4%, while capacity was up 27.1%. In addition, the airline's revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) were up 34.7% compared to April last year.
“Following a quieter month in March, leisure travel demand experienced a boost in April,” said Cathay Group chief customer and commercial officer Lavinia Lau. “The Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens and the festive period in Indonesia generated strong demand for return traffic early in the month, followed by a notable increase in travel demand over Easter. Then, towards the end of April, we observed robust pre-holiday demand from the Chinese mainland and Japan, coinciding with the respective ‘golden week’ holidays in those two markets.”
The Cathay group's low cost airline HK Express noted a 47.4% increase in passengers, totalling 695,607 customers. The airline's passenger load factor was relatively flat, up 0.5 percentage point to 85.2%, while capacity was up 42% and RPKs were up 42.8%.
The long-weekend holidays had also supported HK Express' April traffic figures.
Cargo also performed well, with cargo carried increasing 13.6% during the month with cargo capacity up 8.9%, while cargo RPKs were up 6.8%.
“On the cargo front, the latest announcements regarding the tariffs between China and the United States provide some reassurance to the market in the near term,” said Lau. “We will continue to closely monitor the market conditions and leverage our built-in flexibility to adjust freighter capacity.”
He added that the company has “seen steady replacement cargo from other parts of our network including southeast Asia” for the first half of May as demand from Hong Kong and Chinese mainland reduced.
Cargo load factor for April was down 1.1 percentage point to 58.3%.