Cathay Pacific Increases Heathrow Frequency as Hong Kong Relaxes the COVID limitations
In December, Cathay Pacific will increase the number of flights between London and Hong Kong to as many as four per day as it renews its post-pandemic timetable.
The beneficial effects of further easing travel restrictions and quarantine procedures by the Hong Kong government were still evident in traffic statistics for September.
For local pilots stationed locally starting on September 10 and for visitors arriving in Hong Kong starting on September 26, this included the elimination of the requirement for a hotel quarantine.
Carrying increased by 265,845 over September 2021 because of the rule change, although they were still 89% below the pre-pandemic level in the same month of 2019.
Just 16% of pre-Covid levels were being carried last month.
Looking forward, chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam indicated that Heathrow would see a “substantial increase” in passenger flights in November and December.
“An additional 31,500 seats will be offered over the two months and on certain days in December we will be operating four flights a day,” he added.
“Customers can also look forward to the return of our First class offering on our prime London Heathrow flight, CX251/CX252, starting 5/6 December respectively.”
Student traffic from both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland helped boost carryings in September. Overall passenger numbers rose month-on-month to more than 8,800 a day, while the load factor was 72.5%.
“Demand for student travel to the US tapered down from the second week of September, but this was balanced by growing demand among UK-bound student traffic,” Lam said.
“As such, we increased the number of flights operated between Hong Kong and the UK from 111 sectors in August to 134 in September, with load factor on flights to London reaching 96%. We also added capacity on flights to Japan and south-east Asia.
“Aside from student traffic, inbound traffic to Hong Kong also improved, largely driven by demand from the US and Canada.
“The removal of hotel quarantine arrangements for passengers arriving in Hong Kong was a very welcome development that has helped boost sentiment for travel. In the last week of September, we saw a considerable increase in demand for flights to Singapore, Bangkok and Seoul.
“Looking ahead, we remain focused on adding as many passenger flights as we can, and have already added more than 400 flight sectors in October to and from regional and long-haul destinations since the September announcements by the government. We have resumed passenger flights to five destinations this month – Madrid, Milan, Dubai, Kathmandu and Bengaluru – bringing our total number of destinations to 51 in October.