Cathay Pacific Airways has released its combined Cathay Pacific and Dragonair traffic figures for June 2015 that show a marginal increase in the volume of cargo and mail along side a healthy rise in the number of passengers carried compared to the same month in 2014.

Cathay Pacific and Dragonair carried 141,136 tonnes of cargo and mail last month, an increase of 0.5 per cent compared to June 2014. The cargo and mail load factor fell by 2.2 percentage points to 62.7 per cent. Capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, rose by 5.9 per cent while cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres (RTKs) flown increased by 2.2 per cent. In the first six months of 2015, tonnage rose by 8.0 per cent against a capacity increase of 8.9 per cent and a 10.5 per cent rise in RTKs.

Cathay Pacific general manager cargo sales & marketing Mark Sutch said: “Growth in the cargo markets has been softening as the year has progressed and we saw a continuation of this trend in June. Last month’s tonnage growth was almost flat year-on-year and fell well short of the increase in capacity in percentage terms.

“Traffic out of the home market was generally steady, but demand out of Mainland China was more sporadic and was again affected by strong competition. Leveraging our strong network in Southeast Asia helped maintain traffic flows on our transpacific services and we did not trim capacity on these lanes. Conversely, demand from Asia to Europe remained weak and we pared back freighter services on these routes, relying instead on our extensive passenger aircraft belly lift.”