Cathay traffic drops in March
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Cathay Pacific Airways has released the combined Cathay Pacific and Dragonair traffic figures for March 2011, with the two airlines seeing a slight decline in the number of passengers carried compared to the same month last year.
Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried a total of 2.16 million passengers last month – down 2.8% from March 2010 – while the passenger load factor slumped 8.8 percentage points to 76.9%. Capacity for the month, measured in available seat kilometres (ASK), expanded 9.8%.
The airlines were hit by a 5.5% drop in traffic on routes to and from mainland China, and an 11.6% decline in demand on other Northeast Asian routes, impacted by the 11 March earthquake in Japan. Routes to and from Southeast Asia however, increased 9.3%.
Cathay Pacific’s General Manager for Revenue Management, Tom Owen said; “Although premium demand remained firm in most markets, the slump in demand on all our Japanese routes is evident. North American and Southeast Asian markets remained strong, although it was a challenging month for the Economy Class cabins on European and South West Pacific routes, affected to some extent by an Easter seasonality shift as well as heightened competition. China markets remain encouragingly strong overall, although we face revenue challenges specifically on the Shanghai routes off a very high base in 2010.”
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