Cathay Pacific figures creeping towards positive

CATHAY Pacific Airways has recorded only a slight year-on-year drop in traffic for September, suggesting the Asian carrier’s fortunes will be favourable in 2010.Both Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried a total of 133,301 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, down 5.8 per cent on September 2008, while the cargo and mail load factor rose by 7.9 per cent to 74.4 per cent. Capacity for the month, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, was 13.6 per cent down. For the first nine months of the year, tonnage has fallen by 12.3 per cent against a capacity reduction of 13.9 per cent.Cathay Pacific’s general manager of cargo sales and marketing, Titus Diu, was optimistic but still cautious: “The trend of plummeting yields that began in fourth quarter 2008 and continued through second quarter of 2009 has stopped as volumes have strengthened,” he said.“We have experienced a gradual improvement in both volume and yield, albeit from a low base. However, it is still too soon to say whether these improvements are the beginning of a sustained recovery.”