Cargo volume at Cathay Pacific Airways remained flat last month as the global cargo market continues a worrying downward trend this year.
Combined traffic figures for Cathay Pacific and Dragonair released by the company on Tuesday showed a 2.2 per cent year-on-year drop in cargo load factor in June, as cargo volume grew only 0.5 per cent compared with a 5.9 per cent increase in capacity.
“Growth in the cargo markets has been softening as the year has progressed and we saw a continuation of this trend in June,” Cathay’s general manager for cargo sales and marketing, Mark Sutch, said.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on July 1 that global air cargo growth had “undoubtedly come off the boil” due to a weak global economy. Carriers in the Asia-Pacific region experienced slow growth as a result of poor import/export performance, with trade volumes for emerging Asia markets down 10 per cent at the end of the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter of last year, IATA said.
Sutch said Cathay had “sporadic” demand and “strong competition” in mainland China, the largest source market.
On the passenger side, Cathay recorded a 7.6 per cent year-on-year increase in traffic in June, but said the Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) outbreak has resulted in a “sharp fall” in bookings for South Korea.