Cathay Pacific reported increased cargo volumes in January as the airline continues to rebuild and restore connectivity at the Hong Kong international aviation hub.

The airline carried carried 95,139 tonnes of cargo last month, an increase of 28.1% compared with January 2022, when Cathay had to suspend its long-haul schedule for seven days due to stricter quarantine measures.

Month-on-month, however, January's cargo volumes are down compared to the 106,471 tonnes of cargo that Cathay handled in December 2022.

This is also lower than the 103,092 tonnes of cargo handled by the carrier in November last year.

"In terms of cargo, we saw a small uptick in demand prior to the Lunar New Year holiday, which was supported by more normal cross-border trucking services as the Covid-19 situation on the Chinese Mainland stabilised," said Lavinia Lau, chief customer and commercial officer at Cathay.

"This resulted in a good level of cargo being carried in the first half of January. However, as we approached the Lunar New Year period, overall demand softened as factories closed for the holidays."

Lau added that this drop-off was expected, and Cathay "rationalised its freighter capacity in advance to reflect the reduced demand."

"Therefore, our tonnage in January decreased 11% month on month, while our cargo flight capacity declined 4% compared with the previous month. Load factor was about 62%," the new chief customer and commercial officer at Cathay added.

For January, Cathay reported that cargo revenue tonne kilometres (RFTKs) increased 140.9% year-on-year.

Meawhile, the cargo load factor decreased by 14.4 percentage points to 62.2%, while capacity — measured in available cargo tonne kilometres (AFTKs) — increased by 196.8% year-on-year.

Cargo outlook

Looking ahead, Lau noted that recovery is underway following the cargo volume slowdown related to the Lunar New Year holidays.

"Regarding cargo, demand will take some time to recover following the Lunar New Year holidays," she said. "We expect regional lanes to resume earlier than long-haul lanes, as is typical for this period."

In contrast, Cathay Pacific continued to report a surge in passenger volumes. For January, the Hong Kong-based airline carried a total of 1.03 million passengers, an increase of 4,077.9% compared with January 2022.

Lau noted that this is the first time that the airline carried more than one million passengers since the start of the pandemic.