Cathay Pacific Cargo has seen cargo and mail volumes increase by 2.1 per cent to 147,643 tonnes though it is still down 1.8 per cent year-to-date.

Between January and April volumes were down 1.8 per cent to 569,638 tonnes. Revenue tonne kilometres increased by 0.6 per cent to 853.9 million but were down 3.4 per cent between January and April to 3.3 billion.

Cathay Pacific cut capacity in available tonne kilometres by 0.8 per cent to 1.3 billion but was up 1.7 per cent to 5.3 billion. The load factor was up 0.9 percentage points in April to 63.5 per cent but down 3.3 percentage points to 61.7 per cent from January to April.

Cathay Pacific general manager cargo sales and marketing, Mark Sutch says: “April saw a better-than-expected performance for our cargo business, at least in terms of tonnage. We managed capacity astutely and were able to capture shipments out of key markets, including Mainland China and India, which led to a small improvement in load factor.”

“India remains a focus for our cargo business at the moment and we operated a number of additional services to and from the country in April in response to strong demand.”

“The big issue at the moment is yield, which remains under intense pressure due to the overall softness of the markets and the big increase in competitor capacity.”