HONG KONG, 20 March 2023: Cathay Pacific’s London-bound services from Hong Kong will increase to five flights daily on selected days starting in April, the airline reports in its February performance data released last week.
Commenting on the network increases the airline’s chief customer, and commercial officer Lavinia Lau said: “London will start to see five return flights a day on select days from April. For Japan, we plan to increase from 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 business travellers and Haikou will welcome.”
Passenger traffic picks up
Cathay Pacific released its traffic figures for February last week as the airline’s positive momentum at the start of the year continued.
It carried 1,114,727 passengers last month, an increase of 3,467% compared with February 2022. The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 4,720% year-on-year.
Passenger load factor increased by 38.6 percentage points to 86.2%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 2,562% year-on-year. In the first two months of 2023, passengers carried increased by 3,737% against a 2,071% increase in capacity and a 4,227% increase in RPKs, compared with the same period for 2022.
“We are pleased that our positive start to 2023 continued in February. Passenger numbers improved after the Lunar New Year holidays; we carried more than 1.1 million passengers last month, averaging almost 40,000 daily. We continued to add more flights and destinations, with February seeing passenger flight capacity increase about 6% month-on-month and the resumption of our Wenzhou flights,” Lau commented.
Outlook
Looking at March and beyond, the airline reports it is rebuilding connectivity at the Hong Kong international aviation hub. By the end of March, the Cathay Group will operate approximately 50% of pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity, covering more than 70 destinations.
“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 and Haikou.”
Starting on 26 March, passengers will be able to book first-class travel between Beijing and Hong Kong and on the route to Los Angeles,
