HONG KONG, 28 October 2024: Cathay Pacific and HK Express served 21 million passengers during the first nine months of 2024, the airline group confirmed in a press statement last week.
Traffic figures for September 2024 showed Cathay Pacific carried 1,816,908 passengers, an increase of 17.8% compared with September 2023.
The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 18.4% year-on-year. Passenger load factor decreased by 2.3 percentage points to 81.4%, while available seat kilometres (ASKs) increased by 21.7% year-on-year.
In the first nine months of 2024, passengers carried by CX increased by 28.4% to 16,553,713, against a 34.2% increase in ASKs and a 27.8% increase in RPKs, compared to the same period for 2023.
Travel takeaways
Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau said: “Following the end of the busy peak summer months for leisure travel, September marked the shift to the outbound student travel peak. Student traffic to the UK continued to rise before the start of the new school year, with our outbound flights from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom achieving high load factors.
“Although September is typically a quieter month for leisure travel, demand picked up towards the end of the month, coinciding with the National Day ‘Golden Week’ holiday period.
“We saw significant demand from Hong Kong to cities in Japan and Bangkok, and from the Chinese Mainland to destinations in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and Europe around the holidays.
“September also marked the start of the business travel peak season. There was a notable increase in demand for our premium cabins driven by various events, conferences and exhibitions, most notably the Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks. This resulted in September having the highest premium cabin load factor of any month in 2024.
Outlook 2025
“Looking ahead to the coming months, we will add more flights and destinations to cater to growing travel demand. We are seeing promising demand for Christmas and expect bookings during this period to be higher than last year.”
Cathay Pacific recently announced the launch of nonstop flights between Hong Kong and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The new service will commence in April 2025, marking the airline’s sixth passenger destination in the US and eighth in North America.
Also, HK Express will launch new routes to Hualien and Shizuoka in December 2024 and Sendai in January 2025. So far, in 2024, the airline group has announced 17 new destinations, eight of which have commenced services.
New business class suite
Lau concluded: “More recently, as part of our continued efforts to elevate the customer experience further, we are delighted to have launched our all-new business class, Aria Suite, together with our new premium economy and refreshed economy cabins onboard our retrofitted Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.
“The first of these refreshed aircraft has already entered service on our Beijing route and will be progressively deployed on other selected regional routes before starting its long-haul operations. The new cabin experience has been thoughtfully designed to maximise our customers’ comfort and enjoyment, and we look forward to welcoming our customers onboard to experience it for themselves.”
