Cathay Pacific expects student travel to the UK following the summer holidays will provide a boost this month.
The projection came as the Hong Kong airline carried more than ten million passengers in the first eight months of the year, including almost 1.8 million in August.
Carryings in the year to last month were up by 1,302% over the same period in 2022 as travel rebounded from strict Covid restrictions.
The August passenger load factor increased by 19.4 percentage points to 88%, while capacity was up by 244.9% year-on-year.
Chief customer and commercial officer Lavinia Lau said: “Travel demand remained strong as we entered the second month of the traditional peak summer season in August.
“We continued to increase our flight frequencies to cater for the strong demand. Our newly resumed flights serving Johannesburg received a very positive response, in particular among business and leisure travellers flying to Hong Kong and beyond.
“In the first half of the month, we saw consistently high demand for leisure travel from Hong Kong and the rest of the Greater Bay Area to various short-haul destinations. We also saw increased demand for outbound travel from Japan to Hong Kong and onward destinations in Asia and Europe in mid-August, coinciding with the Obon holiday period in Japan.
“Meanwhile in the latter part of the month, there was a notable increase in student travel to Canada, the US and the UK from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland ahead of the start of the new school year.
“Looking ahead at our travel business, continued demand for student travel to the UK in particular will provide a good boost in September, while overall the outlook for the rest of 2023 looks promising.
“We continue to add more flights for our customers, in particular to and from the Chinese mainland where we are currently operating about 170 return flights per week to 16 airports in 15 cities.
“We were also excited to announce earlier this month that our Colombo and Chennai services will be resuming in February 2024 as we continue to bring back more destinations for our customers.”