The Cathay Pacific Group has warned that it will post a loss of about HK$9.9 billion (£1 billion) for the first half of 2020 because of the pandemic.
This loss compares to a net profit of HK$1.3 billion (£133 million) for the same period in 2019.
The profit warning came as the group said Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon carried just 27,106 passengers last month – a decrease of 99.1% compared to June 2019.
Ronald Lam, Cathay Pacific Group chief customer and commercial officer, said: “The landscape of international aviation remains incredibly uncertain with border restrictions and quarantine measures still in place across the globe.
“Although we have begun to see some initial developments, notably a slight increase in the number of transit passengers following the easing of transit restrictions through Hong Kong International Airport, we are still yet to see any significant signs of immediate improvement.”
He added: “Demand continued to be very weak in June with our airlines carrying less than 1% of the passengers we carried in the same month in 2019.
“We operated about 4% of our normal passenger flight capacity in June. This was slightly more than we operated in May, having resumed services to some destinations such as New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Melbourne in late June. Load factor remained low at 27.3%, and on average we carried approximately 900 passengers a day only.
“We observed a gradual pick-up in connecting passenger demand as the ban on transit traffic through Hong Kong International Airport began being partially eased.
“Towards the end of the month, transit traffic reached about 32% of overall traffic, with notable demand from destinations in southeast Asia such as the Philippines and Vietnam to North America.
“We expect that our airlines will operate up to 10% of the normal flight schedule in August and will continue to assess the potential of increasing more flights and adding destinations for our customers in the coming months.”
Last month, the airline agreed a HK$39 billion (£4 billion) state bailout, which will see the Hong Kong government take a 6% stake in Cathay Pacific and appoint two observers on its board as part of the recapitalisation plan.