Cathay Pacific suffers 98.6% passenger decrease in October

Revenue passenger kilometres fell by 98% over last month.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on Cathay Pacific Group’s revenue, with its network suffering a 98.6% YoY decrease in passengers during October.

The calculated revenue per passenger kilometre (RPK) dropped by 98% which resulted in a fall of 18.2% in its passenger load factor.

In total, the first 10 months of 2020 saw a total passenger decrease of 84.6%, with RPK falling by 82.6%.

Cargo and mail revenue also decreased by 30.2% in October, but has still been the better performer among Cathay’s business segments for the year.

“Following the National Day Holidays at the beginning of October, demand from our home market, Hong Kong, and the Chinese mainland rebounded quickly, driven by new electronic products,” Cathay Pacific Group chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam said.

“Return traffic from the Americas and Europe also improved month-on-month, whilst Intra-Asia traffic was buoyant with solid perishable goods movements and some signs of a recovery in auto-parts traffic.”

Cathay Pacific has already retrenched 5,900 employees and closed its Cathay Dragon subsidiary as cost-cutting measures against the profit loss brought about by the pandemic.