Cathay Pacific Airways has had a strong start to 2017 with cargo and mail up 2.3 per cent to 151,133 tonnes, with strong demand across key Asian markets.
The combined growth for Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon in January is slower than the 9.9 per cent year-on-year surge seen in December but was described as “a solid start” by general manager cargo sales & marketing, Mark Sutch.
He says: “Tonnage grew ahead of capacity and showed an increase over the same month last year. We saw a good rebound in demand from Hong Kong, Mainland China and various key Asian markets. Yield was sustained through a better mix of priority and special shipments.”
“There was also robust demand for fresh produce and seafood across the network. We operated a number of extra-sector freighters to the Americas, Europe and India in January, while cutting back on capacity in February to adapt to Chinese New Year’s January start.”
Cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres grew one per cent to 862,953 tonnes, while capacity in available tonne kilometres was up 0.5 per cent, pushing load factors up 0.3 percentage points to 61.9 per cent.
