Cathay Pacific reported positive passenger numbers for February 2023 with an increase of 3,467% compared to the same time last year. Cathay Pacific carried a total of 1,114,727 passengers in February 2023 and reported an increase of 4,720% year-on-year in terms of revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs).
The airline reported a rise of 38.6 percentage points to 86.2% passenger load factor while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 2,562% year-on-year.
In the first two months of 2023, the number of passengers carried increased by 3,737% against a 2,071% increase in capacity and a 4,227% increase in RPKs, as compared with the same period for 2022.
Lavinia Lau, Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, said: “We are pleased to see that our positive start to 2023 continued in February. Passenger numbers further improved after the Lunar New Year holidays; we carried more than 1.1 million passengers last month averaging almost 40,000 per day. We continued to add more flights and destinations, with February seeing passenger flight capacity increase about 6% month-on-month as well as the resumption of our Wenzhou flights.”
“Travel demand overall remained strong across our network, especially traffic to and from the Chinese Mainland via the Hong Kong hub. We also saw strong demand on our Taipei and Kaohsiung routes in the last week of February after the lifting of all travel restrictions on Hong Kong and Macau residents. We are pleased to see that demand is also growing for premium travel for both business and leisure purposes,” Lau added.
The airline carried 103,932 tonnes of cargo last month, an increase of 59.6% compared with February 2022.
Going ahead the airline plans on increasing its capacity and rebuilding connectivity at the Hong Kong international aviation hub. By the end of March, the Cathay Group will be operating approximately 50% of pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity, covering more than 70 destinations.
“We continue to add more flights to our schedule, in particular for some of our most popular destinations. London will start to see five return flights a day on select days from April. For Japan, we plan to step up from the current 73 to 120 return flights per week by the summer peak. Meanwhile, for the Chinese Mainland, we aim to operate more than 110 return flights per week to 15 cities by the end of this month, including resuming services to Shanghai Hongqiao airport, which will be welcomed by business travellers, and Haikou,” Lau further added.