Cathay Pacific traffic figures reflecting strong demand for travel

Cathay Pacific has released its traffic figures for April 2023, showing travel demand is strong, especially as the upcoming holiday season approaches.

Travel sentiment has remained positive since the start of the year, as a result, the Cathay Pacific Group – comprising passenger airlines Cathay Pacific and HK Express – carried nearly six million passengers between January and April this year.

Cathay Pacific carried a total of 1,381,073 passengers last month, an increase of 3,283 per cent compared with April 2022.

The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 3,139 per cent year-on-year.

Passenger load factor increased by 31.3 percentage points to 86.9 per cent, while capacity – measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs) – increased by 1,973 per cent year-on-year.

In the first four months of 2023, the number of passengers carried increased by 3,707 per cent against a 2,116 per cent increase in capacity and a 3,989 per cent increase in RPKs, as compared with the same period for 2022.

Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau said: “April was a busy month for our travel business as many of our customers looked to enjoy a getaway during the holiday period. Passenger demand was especially strong over the Easter holiday in the early part of the month, and on 9 April, we recorded our highest number of passengers on a single day since the start of the pandemic, carrying 53,233 in total.

“We experienced a surge in demand from Indonesia in mid-April, coinciding with the end of Ramadan, and we added more flights from Jakarta and Surabaya for our customers accordingly. Towards the end of April, we also saw increased traffic ahead of Labour Day and the Golden Week holiday from the Chinese Mainland.”