Cathay Pacific, Dragonair flew almost 2.8 million passengers in July

A 4.2% increase compared to 2013.

Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried a total of 2,792,171 passengers in July – an increase of 4.2% compared to the same month in 2013.

According to a release from Cathay Pacific, this is based on combined Cathay Pacific and Dragonair traffic figures for July 2014 that Cathay Pacific Airways recently released, which show an increase in the number of passengers carried and cargo and mail tonnage compared to the same month last year.

The passenger load factor rose by 0.6 percentage points to 85.6% while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 5.9%.

For the year to the end of July, the passenger volume rose by 6.1% while capacity was up 5.4%.

Here’s more from Cathay Pacific:

The two airlines carried 146,745 tonnes of cargo and mail in July, an increase of 19.4% compared to the same month last year.

The cargo and mail load factor rose by 4.4 percentage points to 64.7%. Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, rose by 12.7% while cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres (RTKs) flown were up by 20.9%.

For the year to the end of July, tonnage rose by 10.1% while capacity was up by 11.1% and RTKs increased by 13.4%.

Cathay Pacific General Manager Revenue Management Patricia Hwang said: “July marked the beginning of the summer peak period and we saw high passenger loads across the network.

Demand on long-haul routes was particularly strong, both into and out of Hong Kong, and our new fourth daily flight to Los Angeles got off to an encouraging start.

There was some rebound in traffic to Southeast Asia while Korea remained the hot-spot for leisure traffic from the Hong Kong market.

A better-than-expected performance in the premium cabins and the growing contribution from our Premium Economy class helped to ease the pressure on yield last month.”

Cathay Pacific General Manager Cargo Sales & Marketing Mark Sutch said: “After a strong end to the second quarter, demand remained robust in July and the year-on-year tonnage increase was above expectations.

Our performance was underpinned by a strong Hong Kong market and a significant surge in shipments out of the main manufacturing centres in Mainland China.

We operated a full freighter schedule to all points in the Americas in July with good demand in both directions.

We operated fewer freighters to Europe than originally planned though we are now making better use of the belly space in our Boeing 777-300ER passenger aircraft.”