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Cathay Pacific announces three long-haul destinations to Europe
September 1st 2017
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways on Thursday announced new A350 routes to Brussels, Copenhagen and Dublin starting from 2018. Read More »
The Swire Group carrier will launch a four-weekly A350 service to Brussels on March 25. Several Asia-Pacific carriers have launched routes to the Belgian capital in the past two years, including Thai Airways International (THAI) and All Nippon Airways (ANA). Both these carriers benefit from Star Alliance onward connectivity on Brussels Airlines. Cathay will not have the advantage of a local feeder traffic network.
From June 2, Cathay will start a four a week Hong Kong-Dublin A350 service, its first nonstop flight connecting Asia with Ireland. Hainan Airlines has said it was exploring a route from Dublin to the Mainland, but it did not materialize. Cathay will have first mover advantage in Ireland and will be helped by the fact that Hong Kong is set on becoming a regional aircraft leasing hub in Asia. Dublin is the capital of the global aircraft leasing industry so the Hong Kong carrier should attract significant premium traffic to the route.
Nevertheless, making Dublin a non-stop destination could cannibalize Cathay’ s five times a day service to London, which has suffered a yield decline in the past 18 months.
From May 2 through to October 12, Cathay will be adding a thrice-weekly Hong Kong-Copenhagen A350 seasonal route. Again, Cathay will hold the monopoly on the route, although SAS operates five times a week between Hong Kong-Stockholm with A330-300s, a service that provides quick connections to Copenhagen.
“We’re excited to offer the only direct flights between Hong Kong and Brussels, Dublin and Copenhagen. These are all fantastic destinations and attract business and leisure travellers from the world over. We listened to our customers’ demands for more options and greater flexibility and have responded by building direct air links with these great cities,” Cathay Pacific CEO, Rupert Hogg, said.
“Growing our reach to new destinations that aren’t served from Hong Kong boosts the city’s status as Asia’s largest international hub and enables us to capture new and important sources of revenue.”
Cathay needs whatever revenue it can get at the moment. The marquee carrier posted its worst performance in more than 20 years in August – a HK$2 billion (US$153 million) first-half loss.
At the same time, a separate post on “CX Secrets”, a Cathay staff Facebook page, on Tuesday suggested that Cathay would axe its Dusseldorf route, launched in September 2015, due to poor yield performance and the bankruptcy of its only viable connecting partner there, airberlin.
The site also said Cathay Dragon, the 100% owned subsidiary of Cathay Pacific, would take over the parent airline’s Beijing and Denpasar routes.
