HONG KONG's Cathay Pacific Dragon Group reported that cargo volume in February fell 9.6 per cent year on year to 118,711,000 kilos while falling 9.2 per cent to 270,676,000 kilos year to date.
The number of Cathay and Dragon flights also fell 44.5 per cent to 3,539 in February and were down 24 per cent to 10,188 year to date largely due to the coronavirus scare.
'The reduction of passenger flights has a significant impact on cargo capacity as our ability to carry cargo to destinations only served by passenger flights,' said Cathay commercial officer Ronald Lam.
'However, we remain flexible in deploying additional cargo capacity, including mounting additional freighter flights as well as cargo-only passenger flights,' he said.
Cathay also reported an overflow of demand for cargo services into mainland China and Hong Kong due to capacity cutbacks and a surge of pharmaceutical-related orders.
'Our cargo load factor grew 5.8 percentage points with stable yield in February when compared with last year,' said Cathay commercial officer Ronald Lam.
'The prolonged Chinese New Year holiday together with efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak in early February led to a delay in the resumption of production in mainland China,' he said.
'Demand for outbound airfreight from the mainland and Hong Kong only began to recover progressively from mid-February,' said Mr Lam.
Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon carried a total of 1,008,644 passengers last month, or 4,735,301,000 revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) ?V a decrease of 54.1 per cent compared to February 2019.
Passenger load factor decreased by 28.6 percentage points to 53.1 per cent while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), decreased by 29.3 per cent.
The two airlines carried 118,711 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, or 698,019,000 revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTKs) ?V a decrease of 6.9 per cent compared to the same month last year.
The cargo and mail load factor increased by 5.8 percentage points to 66.6 per cent, while capacity, measured in available freight tonne kilometres (AFTKs), was down by 15.1 per cent.
Said Mr Lam: ??We are facing an unprecedented challenge as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause widespread disruption to our operation and business. In February alone, we made a significant unaudited loss of more than HK$2 billion (US$257.5 million) at the full-service airline level.
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The number of Cathay and Dragon flights also fell 44.5 per cent to 3,539 in February and were down 24 per cent to 10,188 year to date largely due to the coronavirus scare.
'The reduction of passenger flights has a significant impact on cargo capacity as our ability to carry cargo to destinations only served by passenger flights,' said Cathay commercial officer Ronald Lam.
'However, we remain flexible in deploying additional cargo capacity, including mounting additional freighter flights as well as cargo-only passenger flights,' he said.
Cathay also reported an overflow of demand for cargo services into mainland China and Hong Kong due to capacity cutbacks and a surge of pharmaceutical-related orders.
'Our cargo load factor grew 5.8 percentage points with stable yield in February when compared with last year,' said Cathay commercial officer Ronald Lam.
'The prolonged Chinese New Year holiday together with efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak in early February led to a delay in the resumption of production in mainland China,' he said.
'Demand for outbound airfreight from the mainland and Hong Kong only began to recover progressively from mid-February,' said Mr Lam.
Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon carried a total of 1,008,644 passengers last month, or 4,735,301,000 revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) ?V a decrease of 54.1 per cent compared to February 2019.
Passenger load factor decreased by 28.6 percentage points to 53.1 per cent while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), decreased by 29.3 per cent.
The two airlines carried 118,711 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, or 698,019,000 revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTKs) ?V a decrease of 6.9 per cent compared to the same month last year.
The cargo and mail load factor increased by 5.8 percentage points to 66.6 per cent, while capacity, measured in available freight tonne kilometres (AFTKs), was down by 15.1 per cent.
Said Mr Lam: ??We are facing an unprecedented challenge as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause widespread disruption to our operation and business. In February alone, we made a significant unaudited loss of more than HK$2 billion (US$257.5 million) at the full-service airline level.
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