Cathay Pacific has released its traffic figures for April 2022. As the recent adjustments to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government’s travel restrictions and quarantine requirements became effective in phases, the airline’s April 2022 traffic figures continued to reflect the impact of some of these constraints.
Cathay Pacific carried a total of 40,823 passengers last month, an increase of 82.2% compared to April 2021, but a 98.7% decrease compared to the pre-pandemic level in April 2019.
The month’s revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) increased 60.7% year-on-year, but were down 98.5% versus April 2019.
Passenger load factor increased by 31.5 percentage points to 55.6%, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), decreased by 30.2% year-on-year, and decreased by 97.7% compared with April 2019 levels.
In the first four months of 2022, the number of passengers carried increased by 37.8% against a 60.1% decrease in capacity and a 15.8% increase in RPKs, as compared to the same period for 2021.
Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Ronald Lam said: “April saw some positive developments for our travel business with improved demand across our network.
“Following the lifting of the ban on inbound flights from nine countries on 1 April in addition to the adjustment of the quarantine period from 14 to seven days for travellers arriving in Hong Kong, we saw increased demand among residents wishing to return home to the city, in particular from the UK.
“In view of this stronger demand, we increased our passenger flight capacity by about 25% compared with March, although we still only operated about 2% of our pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity last month.
“We launched additional frequencies, providing more and better connections for our transit passengers.
“In addition to ongoing demand from the Chinese Mainland, transit traffic going to and from other destinations in Asia also picked up.
“On 29 April, we carried 2,805 passengers in total, which was the highest since 4 August 2021. Conversely, we further reduced our frequencies into the Chinese Mainland in view of the COVID-19 situation in Shanghai.”
“The recent adjustments to the Government’s travel restrictions and quarantine requirements will help facilitate the gradual resumption of travel activities and the strengthening of network connectivity to and from the Hong Kong aviation hub.
“For our travel services, these changes to quarantine and medical surveillance requirements will allow additional flights and destinations to be reactivated.
“We have been and will continue to actively resume more flights to more destinations in the coming months.
“Our flight arrangements from early June notably include daily flights to and from London Heathrow (LHR). We will also be resuming or increasing passenger flights for a number of important markets, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand and India.”
