Cathay Pacific Airways posted impressive numbers for March and in the first quarter (Q1) of 2017 as tonnage grew strongly and other figures were up.

Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon combined carried 181,189 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, a year-on-year (YOY) increase of 15.4 per cent compared to the corresponding month in 2016. The cargo and mail load factor rose by 7.3 percentage points to 70.3 per cent.

Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, was up by 3.3 per cent while cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres (RTKs) increased by 15.4 per cent.

In Q1, the tonnage rose YOY by 11.4 per cent to 469,995 tonnes on Q1 in 2016 against a 1.7 per cent increase in capacity and a 9.4 per cent increase in RTKs. The load factor for the first three months was 65.6 per cent, up 4.5 percentage points.

Cathay Pacific general manager for cargo sales and marketing, Mark Sutch says: “Our cargo business continued its positive momentum into March. Tonnage grew well ahead of our capacity growth. Asian exports were boosted by a number of new product launches and quarter-end project movements.

“Transpacific routes and inbound-India routes were particularly strong. Volumes from the Hong Kong market recorded good year-on-year growth. It was also encouraging to see the inbound loads from Europe and North America continue to hold up well.

“The collective result was a high load factor across the network and improving yields. In March we welcomed Tel Aviv to our network and this took-off to an encouraging start with solid import and export volumes.”