Cathay Pacific’s November traffic figures continued to reflect “encouraging signs of recovery” for the airline and the Hong Kong international aviation hub.
The group carried 526,827 passengers last month, an increase of 652% compared with the same month last year, but still almost 80% down against the pre-pandemic level in November 2019.
The passenger load factor increased by 51.7 percentage points year-on-year to 78.5%, while capacity was up by 127%, but remained 73.1% below November 2019 levels.
Chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam said: “We continue to see positive signs for our travel business. Sentiment and demand for travel out of Hong Kong continued to improve in November.
“We also saw increased visiting friends and relatives (VFR) traffic into Hong Kong, particularly from long-haul origins such as North America, Europe and the south west Pacific. Transit traffic via the Hong Kong hub also improved as we grow our network of destinations.
“On average, we carried about 17,600 passengers a day in November, up from around 13,000 in October.”
Lam added: “As we approach the festive Christmas and new year holiday period, travel demand continues to improve.
“We are further increasing our passenger flight capacity and resuming more destinations, including Sapporo, Fukuoka, Penang and Dhaka in December, as well as Phuket and Nagoya in January next year.
“We expect that short-haul routes to leisure destinations such as Japan and south east Asia will remain strong, continuing on into the Chinese New Year holiday peak as well.
“We are also extremely excited for our customers to be able to experience our elevated, premium first class service again, which is now available on our prime London Heathrow flight, CX251/CX252. First class will be coming to our Paris flight, CX261/CX260, from 18 January 2023 and our Tokyo (Haneda) flight, CX548/CX549, from 1 February.”