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Cathay Pacific passenger numbers soar 88pc

Swire Group
Annette Chiu

The monthly increase is still half the figure from last year

Cathay Pacific Airways' passenger numbers last month surged more than 88 per cent from May when the Sars outbreak was at its peak.

Hong Kong's No1 airline said it carried 459,627 passengers last month compared with 243,976 in May. However, despite the big monthly increase, the figure was down 54.5 per cent year on year.

'For any airline to carry less than half of the number of passengers it did a year ago would, under almost any other circumstances, be utterly devastating,' general manager, sales and distribution, Ian Shiu said yesterday.

'But June's figures are a definite improvement on those for May and they continue to build.'

Revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), the distance flown by paying passengers, plunged 44.5 per cent year on year in June to 2.16 billion, an improvement from May when RPK slumped 67.5 per cent to 1.2 billion. Cathay's first-half RPK hit 17.28 billion, 25.1 per cent lower than the same period last year.

Passenger load factor, meanwhile, was down 7.3 percentage points to 70.7 per cent last month, despite a cut in capacity. The number of flights was down 38.5 per cent year on year to 1,337.

Cathay plans to restore all scheduled services by September. About 70 per cent of its scheduled services are resuming this month and 90 per cent of its flights will operate next month.

'However, competition remains keen on ticket pricing and we still have some way to go to actually break even,' Mr Shiu said.

Cathay's cargo volume was 63,599 tonnes last month, down 13 per cent year on year while cargo load factor was up by 0.2 percentage point to 74.2 per cent.

A total of 405,992 tonnes of cargo was carried in the first half, down 2.3 per cent.

Cargo general manager Kenny Tang said: 'Reduced capacity slowed overall growth during the first six months, but the restoration of all passenger services will help business in the second half.'

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