Cathay Pacific passenger load up despite dropping Lanka

Despite dropping flights to Sri Lanka, the passenger load of Cathay Pacific in July had increased by 3%.

The carrier announced last week together with subsidiary Dragonair it carried a combined 2.10 million passengers in July, up 2.8 percent from the same month last year.

Passenger load factor was up 1.1 percentage point to 84.6 percent during the month, while capacity, measured in terms of available seat kilometers, rose by 0.8 percent over the year-earlier period, the airline said.

The two carriers handled a total of 132,947 tons of cargo in July, up 4.1 percent from a year earlier, although its cargo load factor dropped by 3.1 percentage points to 66.1 percent.

“There has been a continuing shift to ocean freight and yield is under pressure particularly on our North East Asian routes,” said Ron Mathison, Director and General Manager for Cathay’s cargo operations.

However, he said demand out of mainland China remains strong and that the airline will add more long-haul capacity to India, the United States and Europe in the second half, which would boost tonnage growth.

In the seven months to July, Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried a total of 13.06 million passengers, up 1.6 percent from a year earlier. Tonnage rose 0.2 percent to 890,500 tons year-on-year.