Cathay Pacific released its traffic figures for May 2024. In the first five months of the year, Cathay Pacific and HK Express together surpassed the 10 million mark for passengers carried, with a combined 11.2 million passengers carried during the period.
Cathay Pacific carried a total of 1,678,532 passengers in May 2024, an increase of 18.4% compared with May 2023. In the first five months of 2024, the number of passengers carried increased by 40.7% to a total of 8,821,895 compared with the same period for 2023.
Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau said:”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, compared with the same month last year, passenger numbers were 18% higher.
“Although leisure traffic from Hong Kong declined, we saw increased demand from various countries in Southeast Asia 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.
“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 continue to 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 their global network, while HK Express has added Beijing (Daxing), Bangkok (Don Mueang), Sanya and Clark. Their airlines now fly to more than 80 destinations around the world. This number will rise to 90 by next year with destinations including Riyadh on 28 October 2024.
