Cathay traffic climbs in 2013
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Cathay Pacific saw a small rise in demand for its flights in the first half of 2013.
The Hong Kong-based airline, along with its Dragonair subsidiary, carried a total of 14.5 million passengers in January-June 2013, 1.3% more than the same period last year. The result was especially positive for Cathay as it coincided with a 4.8% reduction of the airline’s available seat capacity. This allowed average cabin load factors to rise to 81.3%.
Cathay’s general manager for revenue management, James Tong, said the figures were boosted by a strong June.
“As expected, we saw a surge in traffic last month after a quiet May. Demand was high across the network, buoyed by returning schoolchildren on several key routes and the beginning of summer holiday travel,” said Tong.
“Long-haul routes were particularly busy with high load factors in all classes of travel. We saw some pick-up in the mainland China market compared to the previous month and demand to Japan was again high as a result of the yen depreciation,” he added.
By region, the strongest growth in the first half of the year came on routes to and from Northeast Asia (not including mainland China), which climbed 6.1%. Southeast Asia (+3.5%) and mainland China (+3.1%) also increased, but a major reduction of capacity to North America caused passenger traffic in these routes to slump 12.5%.
Overall, Cathay and Dragonair operated 35,022 flights in the first half of 2013, up 5.1% year-on-year.
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