HONG KONG, 21 June 2024: Cathay Pacific and HK Express together surpassed the 10 million passenger mark, with a combined 11.2 million passengers carried during the first five months of 2023 

Cathay Pacific released its traffic figures for May 2024 on Thursday. The figures showed that the airline carried 1,678,532 passengers in May 2024, an increase of 18.4% compared with May 2023. 

The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 20.8% year on year. Passenger load factor decreased by 4.8 percentage points to 80.3%, while available seat kilometres (ASKs) increased by 28% year-on-year. 

In the first five months of 2024, January to May, the number of passengers carried increased by 40.7% to 8,821,895, against a 45.7% increase in ASKs and a 37.5% increase in RPKs, compared with the same period in 2023.

The airline carried 121,088 tonnes of cargo in May 2024, an increase of 10.2% compared with May 2023. The month’s cargo revenue tonne kilometres (RFTKs) increased 3.8% year-on-year. The cargo load factor decreased by 2.1 percentage points to 59.4%, while available cargo tonne kilometres (AFTKs) increased by 7.5% year-on-year. In the first five months of 2024, the tonnage increased by 10.2% to a total of 594,896 tonnes, against an 11.8% increase in AFTKs and a 4.4% increase in RFTKs, as compared with the same period for 2023.

Travel

Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau commented: “May was, as expected, a slightly quieter period for our travel business compared with previous months as demand slowed down, particularly on our regional routes. Without any long weekend holidays in Hong Kong, we experienced a 4% decrease in passenger numbers compared with April, when multiple holidays drove strong leisure demand. However, passenger numbers were 18% higher compared to the same month last year.

“Although leisure traffic from Hong Kong declined, we saw increased demand from various Southeast Asian countries due to the school holidays there. Additionally, our long-haul services were boosted by the return of student traffic to Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland from North America, resulting in 90% load factors on our United States and Canada routes. Business travel demand continued to be solid, with strong sales in Hong Kong supporting traffic on a number of our Chinese Mainland, North America and United Kingdom routes.

Cargo

“Cargo demand from Hong Kong and the rest of the Greater Bay Area remained solid throughout May. Across our network, tonnage grew 3% against last month and 10% compared with May 2023, underpinned by a capacity growth of 7.5%. We observed particularly strong growth from Hong Kong, the Chinese Mainland, the Taiwan region and Southeast Asia. In terms of commodity mix, there was also an increase in the tonnage of general cargo as well as special cargo, with significant movements in high-end electronics, seafood, and consumer products. E-commerce continued to perform well.

Outlook

“On the travel side, we achieved another milestone in our rebuilding journey as we reached 80% of our pre-pandemic passenger flights as a Group in the second quarter as planned. We remain on track to reach 100% within the first quarter of 2025 as we add more flights and destinations for our customers.

“So far in 2024, Cathay Pacific has already added Chennai, Colombo and, as of this week, Barcelona to our global network, while HK Express has added Beijing (Daxing), Bangkok (Don Mueang), Sanya and Clark. Our passenger airlines now fly to more than 80 destinations around the world. This number will rise to 90 by next year as we continue to welcome even more destinations to our network, including Riyadh, on 28 October 2024.

“For cargo, we expect demand to remain strong as it has been throughout the first five months of 2024. Market sentiment, particularly in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, remains positive, and we will continue to adjust our freighter capacity to suit the needs of our customers.”