HONG KONG, 29 November 2023: Cathay Pacific has released its traffic figures for October 2023, showing the airline and its subsidiary HK Express surpassed the milestone of operating more than 9,000 passenger flight sectors in a month for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Cathay Pacific carried 1,684,700 passengers in October 2023, an increase of 320.2% compared with October 2022. The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 225.8% year-on-year. Passenger load factor increased by 11.1 percentage points to 84.7%, while available seat kilometres (ASKs) increased by 183.1% year-on-year. In the first 10 months of 2023, the number of passengers carried increased by 887.4% against a 461.5% increase in ASKs and a 608.7% increase in RPKs, compared to the same period for 2022.

Travel

Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau commented: “Our travel business continued to see good demand in October, though the overall passenger mix was different from previous months. The elevated levels of student traffic seen in September subsided as the new school year started. However, we saw an increase in business travel as people attended exhibitions and conventions in Hong Kong and trade fairs in nearby Guangzhou, encouraging passenger volumes in the premium cabins. The Chung Yeung Festival long weekend in Hong Kong also drove good leisure travel demand to various regional destinations.

“October also saw the eagerly anticipated resumption of our Chicago service, bringing the number of destinations we serve in the United States to five. We are very encouraged by the response from our customers and saw strong demand for travel from the United States to Hong Kong and onward destinations, especially the Chinese Mainland.”

Outlook

“As a group comprising Cathay Pacific and HK Express, we are on track to achieving our 2023 rebuild target set out late last year. In December 2023, we expect to operate 70% of our pre-pandemic passenger flights, covering about 80 destinations. Regarding satisfying post-pandemic travel demand, our priority has first been facilitating Hong Kong people travelling from and visitors coming to Hong Kong. In those two directions, we project that we will return to 95% of pre-pandemic passenger numbers by the end of 2023. We will add more transit traffic via the Hong Kong hub as we rebuild.

“In 2024, we shall continue to work towards fully rebuilding our flights, and the strong performance of the airline and subsidiaries continued in the first half.

“Concerning the consolidated group result, we expect that the second-half profit in 2023 will surpass the result from the first half and that the group will achieve a consolidated profit for the year overall, which will be our first profitable year since 2019.”