Cathay Pacific Group saw its cargo volumes decline again in September as the overall market remains challenging, according to Hong Kong's flag carrier.
Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon carried 172,637 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, recording a decline of 4.4% compared to the same month last year. This is, however, narrower than the 14% decline recorded in August.
The carrier said cargo and mail load factor fell by 3.7 percentage points to 65.5%. Capacity, measured in available freight tonne kilometres (AFTKs), was up by 0.1% while cargo and mail revenue freight tonne-kilometres (RFTKs) dropped by 5.3%.
In the first nine months of 2019, the tonnage fell by 6.8% against a 0.7% increase in capacity and a 7.0% decrease in RFTKs, as compared to the same period for 2018.
Better month-to-month volumes
“As anticipated, our cargo business showed signs of improvement compared to August as we stepped into air freight’s traditional high-demand season," said Cathay Pacific chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam.
Lam noted that most markets saw a better month-on-month performance as Cathay mounted a number of charter operations on top of our scheduled services to meet added demand for air freight coinciding with the release of new electronic products.
"However, the overall market remains challenging and competitive with tonnage carried and load factor for the year to date still significantly below the same period last year," he said.
The group carried a total of 2.4 million passengers in September, a drop of 7.1% compared to September 2018. This is also lower than the 2.9 million passengers in August. Load factor, further declined by 7.2 percentage points to 73.6%, from dropping, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), rose by 9.8%.
In the first eight months of 2019, the number of passengers carried grew by 1.3% and capacity increased by 6.9%, as compared to the same period for 2018.
“September was another challenging month for our passenger business, with revenue adversely affected by weakened market sentiment, particularly for travel into Hong Kong," Lam said, although transit traffic via Hong Kong remained relatively stable.
China market down; India up
He said the mainland China market has been "hit especially hard" and Cathay Pacific saw "very weak demand for travel over the National Day holiday – traditionally a very strong period."
Its India routes, however, were the main bright spot, buoyed by strong demand between India and North America.
"Our expectation is that the rest of 2019 will remain incredibly challenging for the airline and our second-half financial results are expected to be below those of our first-half,” Lam further said.
