Cathay Pacific's passengers jump 5% to 2.6m in October

Cargo volume and mail uplifted also increased.

Cathay Pacific Airways has released combined Cathay Pacific and Dragonair traffic figures for October 2014, which show an increase in both passenger numbers and the volume of cargo and mail uplifted compared to the same month last year.

According to a release from Cathay Pacific, it and Dragonair carried a total of 2,659,710 passengers in October – a year-on-year increase of 5.0%.

The passenger load factor fell by 0.8 percentage points to 80.7% while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 6.8%.

Meanwhile, for the year to the end of October, passenger volumes were up by 5.6% compared to a 6.0% increase in capacity.

Here's more from Cathay Pacific:

The two airlines carried 156,590 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, an increase of 14.0% compared to October last year.

The cargo and mail load factor rose by 3.5 percentage points to 65.1%. Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, rose by 12.3% while cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres (RTKs) flown were up by 18.7%.

For the year to the end of October, tonnage rose by 11.9% while capacity was up 11.4% and RTKs increased by 15.0%.

Cathay Pacific General Manager Revenue Management Patricia Hwang said: “Traffic growth was generally slower than hoped across the network in October and the upswing in the premium cabins was also below expectations.

Loads to Europe and Australia/New Zealand remained high while, within the region, demand to Korea and Southeast Asia was particularly strong.

The growth in passenger numbers on our North America routes continued to fall short of the sizeable increase in capacity. Demand for leisure and business travel into Hong Kong remained largely unaffected by the protests taking place in the city.”

Cathay Pacific General Manager Cargo Sales & Marketing Mark Sutch said: “The airfreight markets remained buoyant in October and we saw a continued surge in demand out of Hong Kong and Mainland China, which was still being driven by shipments of consumer IT products.

North America remains the focus of our business and we strengthened our network further last month with the launch of a new freighter service to Calgary and increased frequencies into Mexico.

Intra-Asia freight is an increasingly important part of our business and we will launch a new twice-weekly service to Phnom Penh this month to capture more of the demand.”