Cathay Pacific exceeds 30m passengers
Guest Writers are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the specific writer directly
Cathay Pacific and its sister carrier Dragonair have now carried more than 30 million passengers in 2015.
According to the latest data released by the airline, the Hong Kong-based group boarded a total of 31.13m passengers in the first 11 months of 2015, up 8.1% year-on-year. Seat capacity increased 5.9%, while the airlines’ average load factor rose 2.5 percentage points to a strong 85.8%.
In November 2015 alone, Cathay carried 2.78m passengers, also up 8.1% year-on-year. Growth was strongest on long-haul routes to and from Europe (+23.1%), Oceania and South Africa (+17.9%) and North America (+10.7%).
“We saw a healthy increase in passenger numbers in November, which is traditionally one of the quieter months of the year,” said the airline’s general manager of revenue management, Patricia Hwang.
“Demand in the economy cabin remained robust throughout the month, particularly to Europe, North America and on our Southwest Pacific routes. Economy class loads within the region were also generally above expectations, particularly to Japan and Taiwan.
But she added that the airline is still facing headwinds in the long-haul premium sector.
“Traffic in the premium cabins held up well on short-haul routes, though we continued to see a shortfall on some of our key long-haul routes. This, together with factors such as unfavourable currency movements and a greater proportion of connecting traffic, put yield under considerable pressure,” Ms Hwang noted.
Cathay is now certain to exceed 2014’s full-year total of 31.57m passengers.
Comments are closed.