News
Cathay reports US$581 million loss for four months to April 2020
May 15th 2020
Cathay Pacific and its regional wing Cathay Dragon have suffered a combined HK$4.5 billion (US$581 million) loss for the four months to April amid a precipitous drop in travel demand due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read More »
The financial performance of the two carriers was included in Cathay's monthly traffic figures published on Friday.
And there was little respite on the horizon, with Cathay Pacific Group chief customer and commercial officer, Ronald Lam, expecting more of the same for the period ahead.
"The financial outlook continues to be very bleak for the coming few months at least," Lam said. "We expect our average daily passenger numbers will remain at around 500 in May, and that business and leisure travel will remain severely impacted for the foreseeable future.
"Overall, we do not anticipate we will see a meaningful recovery for an extended period."
The Hong Kong carrier flew 13,729 passengers in April, which represented a 99.6% reduction from the same month a year earlier.
Revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), a measure of demand, dropped 99.3%, and load factors were 62.3 percentage points lower at 21.7%.
In an indication of the combined Cathay Pacific/Cathay Dragon skeleton network, the pair operated 1,121 flights in April, 83.7% less than the same month a year ago.
Cathay reaffirmed plans to increase capacity from about 3% of normal operations in May to about 5% in June, subject to a potential relaxation in government health measures.
Lam said industry bodies and analysts were predicting a "much more prolonged recovery for the global aviation industry", with international travel demand tipped to only return to levels prior to the coronavirus pandemic in a few years.
“This is the biggest challenge to aviation we have ever witnessed," Lam said.
"We are evaluating all aspects of our business to ensure that we remain strong and competitive when we emerge from this crisis.
"The world has changed dramatically over the past few months and it is imperative that we do everything in our ability to adapt to this new world in order to secure our future within it."
To reinstate cargo capacity lost when passenger flights were grounded, Lam said Cathay operated about 500 pairs of cargo-only flights with passenger aircraft in April, more than double the number flown in March.
Cathay also started loading cargo in the cabins of its Boeing 777 passenger fleet, which Lam said would serve long-haul markets especially well in the months to come.
“Significant effort was made to prioritise capacity for routings with the highest airfreight demand, most notably to the Americas, Australia and Europe," Lam said.
