Cathay Pacific on Monday (Mar 14) released its traffic figures for February 2022 that continued to reflect the airline’s substantial capacity reductions in response to significantly reduced demand as well as travel restrictions and quarantine requirements in place in Hong Kong and other markets amid the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.
Cathay Pacific carried a total of 31,253 passengers last month, an increase of 47.9% compared to February 2021, and a 98.9% decrease compared to the pre-pandemic level in February 2019. The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 5.2% year-on-year and were down 99% versus February 2019. Passenger load factor increased by 33.8 percentage points to 47.6%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), decreased by 69.4% year-on-year, and decreased by 98.4% compared with February 2019 levels. In the first two months of 2022, the number of passengers carried increased by 8.6% against a 72.8% decrease in capacity and a 12.5% decrease in RPKs, as compared to the same period for 2021.
The airline carried 65,126 tonnes of cargo last month, a decrease of 20.9% compared to February 2021, and a 50.4% decrease compared with the same period in 2019. The month’s cargo revenue tonne-kilometres (RFTKs) decreased 53.3% year-on-year and were down 67.9% compared to February 2019. The cargo load factor increased by 0.9 percentage points to 80.5%, while capacity, measured in available cargo tonne-kilometres (AFTKs), was down by 53.8% year-on-year, and was down by 75.8% versus February 2019. In the first two months of 2022, the tonnage decreased by 27.1% against a 59.1% drop in capacity and a 59.6% decrease in RFTKs, as compared to the same period for 2021.
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Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Ronald Lam said: “The operating environment for Cathay Pacific remains very challenging. Travel and operational restrictions in place in Hong Kong continued to constrain our ability to operate more passenger flight capacity in February and we operated below 2% of pre-COVID-19 levels, a reduction of about 28% compared with January 2022.
“We have remained as agile as possible, deploying passenger flight capacity to cater to last-minute demand, on top of ongoing traffic from the Chinese Mainland to long-haul destinations as well as post-Chinese New Year traffic from Hong Kong to the Chinese Mainland. We also saw some demand for flights to Australia, notably student traffic from the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong. As a result, we carried more passengers in February than we did in January. Load factor edged up to reach about 48%.
