Cathay Pacific to increase flights; July passenger traffic continues to soar

Responding to an upswing in demand, Cathay Pacific Airways plans to increase its flights in November to Australia and New Zealand, along with additional flights to Canada, France and Japan.

Beginning Nov. 15, the airline will expand its Sydney service from 24 times a week to four times daily; Perth will move from daily to 10 weekly. Brisbane and Cairns will get another weekly linked flight beginning Nov. 21.

Cathay will add two more flights to Auckland, making a total of 12 flights per week starting Nov. 27.

Beginning Oct. 31, two more flights will be added to Toronto for a total of 12 flights per week while Osaka will go from three- to four-times daily from Hong Kong.Paris will get one additional flight to 11 per week starting Dec. 11.

Cathay CEO Tony Tyler said the airline aims to increase overall passenger capacity by about 4%, returning to 2008 pre-financial crisis levels. While capacity will be back to pre-2008 levels, traffic mix is very different with far greater capacity focused on Australia and New Zealand.

Separately, Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair posted July passenger and cargo traffic results well above the year-ago semester. The two airlines' passenger numbers jumped 19.5% year-over-year to 2,485,244 in July. ASKs were up 8.8% to 10.05 billion while RPKs increased 14% to 8.7 billion lifting load factor 4 points to 87.5%

The airlines carried 157,374 tonnes of cargo and mail up 18.1% on July last year. Cargo and mail load factor was 76%, a rise of 3.4 percentage points, while ATKs rose 21.3% to 1.21 billion.