Cathay Pacific air traffic rockets by 278.4%

This is 95.3% lower than pre-pandemic levels in August 2019.

Cathay Pacific released its traffic figures for August 2021 and it showed a total of 135,353 passengers last month.

The month's revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) rose 294.1% year-on-year but were down 92.4% versus August 2019. Passenger load factor increased by 26.5 percentage points to 46.4%, whilst capacity, measured in available seat kilometres, increased by 68.9% but remained 86.9% down on August 2019 levels.

"Whilst the COVID-19 situation continues to present us with considerable challenges, we did see some improvement in the performance of our passenger business in August. Overall, passenger capacity increased 81% compared with July, although we still only operated about 13% of our August 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Load factor reached 46.4%, the highest it has been since March 2020," said Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Ronald Lam.

Cathay Pacific's traffic figures for August 2021 continued to reflect the airline's substantial capacity reductions in response to significantly reduced demand, travel restrictions, and quarantine requirements in place in Hong Kong and other markets amid the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.