Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon report combined HK$4.5 billion loss for start of 2020
- Cathay Pacific Group reveals unaudited loss in stock exchange filing
- Senior manager Ronald Lam calls financial outlook ‘very bleak’
Cathay Pacific Group’s two main airlines reported a combined HK$4.5 billion unaudited loss in the first four months of 2020, it said in a stock exchange filing on Friday.
Hong Kong’s flag carrier reported a 99.6 per cent drop in passengers carried in April – the steepest ever reduction recorded by the airline group – from the 3.12 million customers carried in the same month last year.
The airline’s financial performance include losses from fuel-hedging contracts that soured as the price of jet fuel and oil plummeted, while its payments for a certain volume of fuel at a fixed cost remained significantly higher than the market rate.
Lam said he saw no “immediate signs of improvement” as the airline expected to carry around 500 passengers per day in May. The airline is used to carrying 100,000 people a day.
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“This is the biggest challenge to aviation we have ever witnessed,” Lam said. “We are evaluating all aspects of our business to ensure that we remain strong and competitive when we emerge from this crisis.