Cathay Pacific plans to reinstate daily flights from Heathrow to Hong Kong in June as strict Covid curbs begin to be lifted.
A spokesperson said the daily service resumes on June 5, adding: “The schedule is currently fluid and being updated regularly taking lead from the situation in Hong Kong.”
The airline carried 40,823 passengers last month, an increase of 82.2% compared to April 2021, but 98.7% down on to the pre-pandemic level in April 2019.
Chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam said: “April saw some positive developments for our travel business with improved demand across our network.
“Following the lifting of the ban on inbound flights from nine countries on 1 April in addition to the adjustment of the quarantine period from 14 to seven days for travellers arriving in Hong Kong, we saw increased demand among residents wishing to return home to the city, in particular from the UK.
“In view of this stronger demand, we increased our passenger flight capacity by about 25% compared with March, although we still only operated about 2% of our pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity last month.”
Additional frequencies were added to provide more connections for transit passengers.
Lam added: “The recent adjustments to the government’s travel restrictions and quarantine requirements will help facilitate the gradual resumption of travel activities and the strengthening of network connectivity to and from the Hong Kong aviation hub.
“For our travel services, these changes to quarantine and medical surveillance requirements will allow additional flights and destinations to be reactivated.
“We have been and will continue to actively resume more flights to more destinations in the coming months.
“Our flight arrangements from early June notably include daily flights to and from London Heathrow. We will also be resuming or increasing passenger flights for a number of important markets, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand and India.
“We will continue to look for opportunities to add back capacity, and rebuild our hub and network.
“Encouragingly, we expect this additional capacity to have a positive impact on Cathay Pacific’s business and we have been evaluating the potential benefit on our operations and cost base.
“According to our preliminary assessment, we are targeting to reduce operating cash burn to less than HK$0.5 billion per month for the next few months.”