Cathay Pacific sees flights increase 8% this summer but ASKs are down 1% with Chicago only new route in last year

Cathay Pacific recently reported that it made a small loss in the first half of 2012, which was disappointing for the airline, which includes its fully-owned subsidiary Dragonair. The airline (not including regional Dragonair) has launched just a single new route in the last 12 months, to Chicago O’Hare last September. However, analysis of Cathay Pacific’s network (again, not including Dragonair) for August reveals that although the number of flights has increased by 8% compared with August 2011, the number of seats flown is up just 5%, while ASKs are actually down 1.2%. This is because the airline’s average sector length has fallen from 4,472 kilometres to 4,215 as a result of increasing frequencies on a variety of shorter-haul flights and cutting frequencies on longer-haul flights to Australasia, Europe, South Africa and North America.

Region	Increase Frequency	No Change	Decrease Frequency
Asia	Bangkok (35 to 42) Beijing (7 to 14) Jakarta (18 to 28) Kuala Lumpur (21 to 28) Nagoya (10 to 14) Osaka Kansai (18 to 21) Penang (7 to 10) Sapporo-Chitose (4 to 7) Seoul Incheon (28 to 35) Singapore (49 to 56) Surabaya (6 to 11) Taipei (106 to 114) Tokyo Narita (21 to 28)	Cebu (7) Chennai (4) Delhi (7) Denpasar (11) Ho Chi Minh City (14) Manila (37) Mumbai (7) Shanghai Pudong (21) Tokyo Haneda (14)
Europe		Amsterdam (7) Frankfurt (7) Milan Malpensa (7) Moscow Domodedovo (3) Paris CDG (10) Rome Fiumicino (7)	London Heathrow (28 to 27)
Africa			Johannesburg (7 to 5)
Middle East		Dubai (14)	Abu Dhabi (4 to 1) Riyadh (7 to 4)
Australasia	Perth (7 to 9)	Adelaide (7) Brisbane (8) Cairns (3) Melbourne (14)	Auckland (10 to 7) Sydney (28 to 27)
North America	Chicago O’Hare (0 to 7) Los Angeles (17 to 21)	New York JFK (21) San Francisco (14) Vancouver (14)	Toronto (14 to 10)
Source: SRS Analyser for August 2011 and August 2012

The airline’s relatively inefficient 747-400s are gradually being phased out. The 21 aircraft of the type at the end of June will be reduced to 12 by January 2014. As a result, the average seats per flight has also fallen in the last year by just under 3% from 336 to 326. The airline’s current fleet of 111 passenger aircraft comprises 34 A330-300s (241 to 311 seats), 11 A340-300s (265 to 283 seats), 21 747-400s (359 to 379 seats), five 777-200s (336 seats), 12 777-300s (398 seats) and 28 777-300ERs (275 to 340 seats).