Summary Hong Kong's travel industry is on the upswing with Cathay Pacific breaking the two-million-passenger mark after pandemic setbacks. Cathay Pacific has seen a significant increase in passenger numbers in July, expects demand for flights to persist, and has added new routes. July marked a successful month for Cathay Pacific, attributing robust demand to long-haul flights and new services that appeal to travelers.
Before the student riots and the onset of COVID-19, Hong Kong was the undoubted financial hub of Asia, and the city vied with Singapore for the most popular destination title. The extended travel restrictions across Northeast Asia, particularly in Mainland China, significantly delayed the post-pandemic recovery, but the pendulum is swinging back in the right direction, as evidenced by Cathay Pacific's July performance. Hong Kong is gaining momentum On Friday, Cathay Pacific released its passenger and cargo traffic figures for July, and for the first time since the pandemic, the airline broke through the two million passenger barrier in a month.
In July, Cathay Pacific (Cathay) carried 2,008,225 passengers, a 15.1% increase year-on-year (YoY) but still 39% below the number it carried in July 2019. July also showed a substantial improvement over June traffic, with an additional 160,000 passengers for a gain of 9% month-on-month.
Capacity in July 2024, as measured by available seat kilometers (ASK), increased 21.2% YoY, and with demand, as measured by revenue passenger kilometers (RPK), increasing by just 16.1%, the passenger load factor dropped by 3.
8 percentage points to 85.5%. The airline has signed an agreement with Airbus for 30 firm orders and 30 options for the A330-900.
In the first seven months of 2024, Cathay carried 12.67 million passengers, a 32.5% YoY gain, driven by an increase in ASKs of 39% and RPKs of 31.
6%, cutting the load factor by 4.7 percentage points. It should be noted that Cathay is maintaining high load factors, and the additional capacity is needed to fuel growth by adding new routes and services to meet demand, that will push loads back up in the future.
Adding capacity with new routes On Friday, Cathay Pacific Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau said that July marked the start of the summer peak season and was a milestone month for the airline, with more than two million passengers for the first time "since our rebuild, while the 85.5% load factor was the highest of any month this year." "Such robust demand was driven by the increased popularity of long-haul flights to and from Hong Kong in the first half of the month among students and those visiting friends and relatives.
This was followed by a surge in demand for travel to popular short-haul destinations in Japan and Southeast Asia in the second half of July." Lau added that Cathay also saw strong demand for flights from Hong Kong International to Paris due to the Olympic Games, and the airline was delighted to carry many athletes and spectators to the event. Looking ahead, Cathay expects the strong demand will continue in August and September when students will be returning to the UK ahead of the new school year.
Adding to that are some new routes, such as a new four-times-weekly service to Ningbo Lishe International (NGB) in China. The service commenced on August 1, and the flight of just under two hours is operated with an Airbus A321neo . Low-cost subsidiary Hong Kong Express already operates daily services to Ningbo from Hong Kong, The first of 16 A321neos for the all-Airbus airline.
HK Express has announced a new route to the Malaysian island of Penang that will commence on November 21, 2024. Cathay said that passengers can continue to look forward to more exciting destinations being added to the network as it works towards having 100 Group destinations within 2025..
