OREANDA-NEWS. December 24, 2014.  Cathay Pacific Airways today released combined Cathay Pacific and Dragonair traffic figures for November 2014 that show passenger volumes increasing compared to the same month last year, but failing to keep pace with the growth in capacity. The cargo and mail tonnage uplifted continued to show strong year-on-year growth.

Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried a total of 2,569,508 passengers in November – an increase of 3.7% compared to the same month in 2013. The passenger load factor fell by 0.9 percentage points to 80.4% while capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 5.0%. For the year to the end of November, passenger volumes were up by 5.4% compared to a 5.9% increase in capacity.

The two airlines carried 165,102 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, an increase of 12.0% compared to November last year. The cargo and mail load factor rose by 4.7 percentage points to 68.4%. Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, rose by 5.3% while cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres (RTKs) flown were up by 13.1%. For the year to the end of November, tonnage rose by 11.9% while capacity was up 10.7% and RTKs increased by 14.8%.

Cathay Pacific General Manager Revenue Management Patricia Hwang said: “The growth in passenger traffic was again below expectations in November. Unlike in the previous month, we believe some of the shortfall was attributable to the protests taking place in Hong Kong. The overall trends were similar to October, with weaker-than-expected demand in the premium cabins and the growth in traffic on North America routes falling well short of the big increase in capacity. The positive areas were North Asia, with traffic to Japan boosted by the depreciation of the yen, and continuing strong demand to and from Europe and Australia/New Zealand.”

Cathay Pacific General Manager Cargo Sales & Marketing Mark Sutch said: “The demand for air cargo shipments remained very robust throughout November, again driven primarily by strong traffic on the transpacific lanes. Our business was helped by the bottlenecks in seaports on the West Coast of the USA, leading to more shipments being moved by air. Intra-Asian traffic remained robust in November, and it was a better month for our cargo business in Europe, helped by big shipments of the new-release Beaujolais out of France. We carried close to 2,000 tonnes of the wine in total, most of it bound for Japan.”