Cathay traffic growth fails to keep pace with capacity
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Cathay Pacific Airways has released the combined traffic for Cathay Pacific and Dragonair for July 2011, with passenger demand rising 5.4% year-on-year. This failed to keep pace with capacity however, which increased 7.0%, leading to a 1.4-percentage point drop in load factors, to a still-healthy 86.1%. Traffic on routes to Northeast Asia dropped 16.2%, due to the lingering effects of the Japan disasters, while demand for routes to mainland China fell 5.3%. Strong growth was seen on routes to Southeast Asia (+16.5%), North America (+15.4%) and India & West Asia (+8.7%).
For the first seven months of the year, Cathay and Dragonair experienced a 3.9% rise in passenger traffic on a 9.4% capacity expansion, leading to a 4.3% drop in load factors, which averaged 80.3%.
The airlines’ General Manager for Revenue Management, James Tong said; “Passenger traffic held up well in the first month of this year’s summer peak, though the increase in passenger numbers didn’t keep pace with the year-on-year increase in capacity and our load factor fell as a result. The weakness on routes such as Shanghai, Japan and the Middle East continued, but key long-haul routes held up well, as did traffic in Southeast Asia. Our premium business remained strong, with both volumes and yield showing growth over 2010.”
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