Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair saw a glimmer of hope in April’s figures with a 2.1 per cent rise in cargo and mail volumes to 147,643 tonnes of cargo and mail in April, year-on-year.

The cargo and mail load factor rose by 0.9 percentage points to 63.5 per cent while capacity, measured in available cargo/mail tonne kilometres, fell by 0.8 per cent and cargo and mail revenue tonne kilometres (RTKs) rose by 0.6 per cent.

In the first four months of 2016, the tonnage carried fell by 1.8 per cent against a 1.7 per cent increase in capacity and a 3.4 per cent drop in RTKs.

Cathay Pacific general manager cargo sales & marketing Mark Sutch said: “April saw a better-than-expected performance for our cargo business, at least in terms of tonnage. We managed capacity astutely and were able to capture shipments out of key markets, including Mainland China and India, which led to a small improvement in load factor.

“India remains a focus for our cargo business at the moment and we operated a number of additional services to and from the country in April in response to strong demand. The big issue at the moment is yield, which remains under intense pressure due to the overall softness of the markets and the big increase in competitor capacity.”