Combined cargo and mail volume carried by Cathay Pacific Airways and sister airline Dragonair showed another year-on-year decline for August, but Cathay Pacific is optimistic of a turnaround starting this month.
The Hong Kong-based airlines carried 122,351 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, a drop of 6.9 percent compared to August 2011 figures.
Cargo and mail load factor contracted by 3 percentage points to 61.9 percent. Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometers, decreased by 6.1 percent, while cargo and mail tonne kilometers flown dropped by 10.4 percent.
For the year to date, tonnage has shrunk by 9.6 percent against a capacity drop of 5.5 percent.
“Demand in the cargo markets is traditionally weak in August and this year was no exception,” said James Woodrow, general manager for cargo sales and marketing of Cathay Pacific. “We saw a decline in tonnage compared to the same month in 2011, when demand had already seen a significant falloff, and our load factor was down despite the reduction in capacity.”
He believes, however, that there will be “some increase in demand from mid-September onwards, driven by the shipment of hi-tech products from the key manufacturing centres in Mainland China.”
Photo: contri
