Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific to ramp up flights to top destinations as airline resumes travel to 5 more locations

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has said it will add hundreds of flights to popular destinations such as Japan and the United Kingdom during the last two months of this year, as the company resumed travel to five other locations.

But analysts said Cathay was still a long way from achieving its long-term goal of reaching pre-pandemic operational levels and expected more visible signs of expansion starting next year.

Cathay on Monday said it had restored flights to Madrid, Milan, Dubai, Kathmandu and Bangalore this month, bringing the airline’s network up to 51 destinations from 29 in January.

In a statement from the same day, Ronald Lam Siu-por, the airline’s chief customer and commercial officer, said the company was on track to reach around 60 destinations by the end of 2022, less than half of the 119 covered by Cathay before the coronavirus pandemic started in early 2020.

Cathay would be operating an additional 700 passenger flights in November, with another 1,200 flights in December to popular destinations, including Japan and Britain, he said.

The ramp-up in flights would provide more than half a million seats, Lam added.

With Japan relaxing curbs to allow visa-free travel for individual tourists from October 11, Cathay said it would resume daily flights to Tokyo Haneda from November 1 and operate planes to Sapporo four times a week from December 1.

The increase in passenger flights to and from Hong Kong during November included an additional 146 flights to Osaka, Tokyo Narita, Tokyo Haneda and Sapporo, the airline said, rising to 234 flights in December, accounting for an additional 140,000 seats over the last two months of the year.