SIMIC

February's revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTKs) fell 26.2 per cent year on year. The cargo and mail load factor increased 13 percentage points to 79.5 per cent, while capacity, measured in available freight tonne kilometres (AFTKs) fell 38.3 per cent.

In the first two months of 2021, the tonnage fell by 29.4 per cent against a 39.7 per cent drop in capacity and a 23.8 per cent decrease in RFTKs, as compared to the same period of 2020.

Cathay Pacific Group Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, Ronald Lam said: "We saw strong cargo demand in the first 10 days of February driven by the pre-Chinese New Year holiday rush, particularly in the Chinese mainland market. As a result, we saw increased use of our Priority LIFT product across the network as customers sought space for their time sensitive shipments."

Cargo volumes dipped over the Chinese New Year period, though not as drastically as in previous years due to fewer factories remaining closed during this time. Mr Lam said demand did begin to recover towards the end of the month, but this was impacted by the introduction of the tightened crew quarantine measures.

"These measures also have a notable impact on our capacity and therefore our tonnage carried. Overall in February, capacity dipped month-on-month by 23 per cent, while load factor remained high at 79.5 per cent".

The airline flew the first shipments of Sinovac and Fosun Pharma/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines into Hong Kong in February and it also carried a variety of vaccines from both Europe and the Chinese mainland into Malaysia and Mexico.

"We are well-placed to handle future COVID-19 vaccine shipments and continue assisting with the global rollout of vaccines. Despite our immediate challenges, we expect to see a strong cargo performance in 2021, much as we did in 2020."

Cathay carried a total of 21,134 passengers in February, a year-on-year decrease of 97.9 per cent. Last month's revenue passenger kilometres fell 98 per cent compared to same month in 2020. The passenger load factor dropped by 60 percent points to 19.9 per cent, while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres, decreased by 92.2 per cent.

Looking ahead, Mr Lam said: "As the pace of recovery in demand for international travel remains highly uncertain and with the new quarantine requirements for our Hong Kong-based aircrew remaining in place, we will continue to operate a skeleton passenger flight schedule until at least the end of this month."

He said he anticipated that the average number of passengers carried per day in March will remain low at below 600. "We have said that we expect to operate well under a quarter of pre-pandemic passenger flight capacity in the first half of 2021, and below 50 per cent for the entire year".