Air cargo down in January for Cathay
21 / 03 / 2015
CATHAY PACIFIC and sister airline Dragonair saw cargo and mail tonnage decline year-over-year in January.
They carried 130,955 tonnes of cargo and mail in the month, a drop of 1.4 per cent on January 2013.
The cargo and mail load factor fell by 2.5 percentage points to 60.5 per cent, as capacity, measured in available cargo/mail-tonne-kilometres, increased by 8.3 per cent while flown cargo and mail revenue-tonne-kilometres rose by 4.0 per cent.
Mark Sutch, general manager of cargo sales and marketing, says that the markets softened quite sharply after the pre-Christmas peak.
“We didn’t see any significant surge in demand prior to Chinese New Year, though there were healthy imports of seafood and other perishable items into Greater China and North Asia in advance of the holidays,” he adds.
Demand fizzled out as the long holiday began in Mainland China and factories closed in other manufacturing centres in the region.
“We expect the pickup in February to have been slow,” he warns.
