Mike King, Special Correspondent | Mar 12, 2012 10:27AM EDT
Cathay Pacific Airways’ key markets remained “soft” in February with year-over-year traffic gains, mostly because of the early Chinese New Year holiday.
Combined, Cathay Pacific and Dragonair saw cargo and mail metric ton kilometers rise 2 percent last month compared to a year earlier. Total tonnage grew 0.8 percent, but the carriers’ cargo and mail load factor fell 1.8 percentage points to 65.8 percent as capacity, measured in available cargo/mail metric ton kilometers, rose 4.7 percent.
James Woodrow, general manager of cargo sales and marketing, said that although the figures looked encouraging, year-over-year comparisons were “distorted” because of the Chinese New Year, which brings trade to and from China to a halt.
“Our key markets remained soft, with weak demand to Europe in particular out of Hong Kong and Shanghai,” he said. “We continued to manage capacity in line with demand, which helped to keep load factors reasonably stable.
“At the end of February,” he said, “demand out of Hong Kong and mainland China did improve due to large project shipments.”
Contact Mike King at michael@borderline.eu.com.