HONG KONG, 21 September 2023: Cathay Pacific released on Wednesday traffic figures for August 2023, showing the airline surpassed the milestone of carrying more than 10 million passengers in the first eight months of 2023.
Cathay Pacific carried 1,784,980 passengers last month, an increase of 603% compared with August 2022. The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 342.8% year-on-year. Passenger load factor increased by 19.4 percentage points to 88%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 244.9% year on year. In the first eight months of 2023, the number of passengers carried increased by 1,302% against a 633.1% increase in capacity and an 876.7% increase in RPKs, as compared with the same period for 2022.
Commenting on the passenger traffic performance, the airline’s 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 positive response, particularly 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.
Outlook
Looking ahead, there is continued demand for student travel to the UK, which 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, particularly to and from the Chinese Mainland, where we currently operate 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 resume in February 2024 as we continue to bring back more destinations for our customers,” said Lau.
