Cathay Pacific will be operating all its aircraft again by the end of next year, CEO Ronald Lam said this week, noting \u201clight at the end of the tunnel\u201d.<\/p>\n
Cathay still has 67 inactive aircraft, according to CH Aviation\u2019s database, of which 11 are under maintenance. The others, which include nine A330-300s and 22 777s, are stored in Hong Kong, Alice Springs, Ciudad Real and Xiamen.<\/p>\n
Last month saw Cathay Cargo, as it is now branded, carry nearly 60% more freight than a year earlier, when its capacity was significantly cut owing to quarantine measures. Cathay said its cargo revenue tonne km (RFTKs) went up 154% \u2013 although load factors fell as capacity went up 206%.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the first two months of 2023, the tonnage increased by 42.8% against a 201.3% increase in capacity and a 147.4% increase in RFTKs, compared with the same period for 2022,\u201d the carrier said.<\/p>\n
Despite significant changes in Cathay\u2019s capacity this year versus 2022, a UBS research note, published yesterday on Hong Kong International Airport\u2019s tonnage data, failed to mention the hub carrier\u2019s challenges. It said, instead: \u201cWhile yoy volume growth in Feb may seem to be a sign of airfreight recovery, we attribute that mainly to the easy comp arising from an early start to Chinese New Year in 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cathay, meanwhile, said Hong Kong was back in business. Mr Lam told Bloomberg TV: \u201cHong Kong opened up late, so there\u2019s quite a lot of catch-up. But I think we are making good progress, and we are moving very fast as a city and as an airline. I\u2019m very confident that given a little bit more time, we\u2019ll be back on par with other cities and airlines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief customer and commercial officer Lavinia Lau added today that, in cargo, \u201cad-hoc demand from South-east Asia as well as South Asia, the Middle East and Africa also helped fill the gaps left by demand from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland on long-haul routes\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cTurning to March and beyond, we are making good progress in increasing our capacity and rebuilding connectivity at the Hong Kong international aviation hub. By the end of March, the Cathay group will be operating approximately 50% of pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity, covering more than 70 destinations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to add more flights to our schedule, in particular for some of our most popular destinations,\u201d she said, noting London, Japan and Shanghai in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the cargo side, demand from our home market, Hong Kong, as well as the Chinese mainland is increasing, with e-commerce-related traffic picking up relatively more quickly. We are progressively expanding our network coverage as more of our passenger flights are resumed.\u201d<\/p>\n
WorldACD meanwhile repor today global tonnages have \u201cstabilised, following their post-lunar new year bounceback in recent weeks and their steady decline most of last year, while average rates continue their gradual softening trends\u201d.<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Lennane, A. (2023, March 17). Cathay Pacific back to business-as-usual soon as aircraft return<\/i>. The Loadstar. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https:\/\/theloadstar.com\/cathay-pacific-back-to-business-as-usual-soon-as-aircraft-return\/<\/p>\n Cathay Pacific will be operating all its aircraft again by the end of next year, CEO Ronald Lam said this week, noting \u201clight at the end of the tunnel\u201d. Cathay still has 67 inactive aircraft, according to CH Aviation\u2019s database, of which 11 are under maintenance. The others, which include nine A330-300s and 22 777s, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[92],"class_list":["post-2607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-airfreight"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}