A deal that would add 18 leased Airbus A321neo aircraft to Cathay Pacific’s fleet is almost ready to be finalized.
The 18 Airbus A321neo aircraft will be delivered on a lease between 2025 and 2027, Bloomberg said, citing sources familiar with the situation. As of June 30, 2023, according to Airbus’ Orders & Deliveries reports, the airline was operating 11 of the type, and another aircraft was ordered by its low-cost affiliate, HK Express.
Data from Ch-aviation.com reveals that, of the 12, five are owned and seven are leased from Bocomm Leasing, a branch of the Hong Kong-based Bank of Communications. The airline anticipates favorable performance for the time period when it releases its complete H1 2023 report on August 9, 2023.
The removal of quarantine requirements in late September 2022 and the gradual expansion of the Group’s capacity since that time, according to the company’s Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Lavinia Lau, led to significant improvements for the Cathay Pacific Group compared to H1 2022. This group includes the aforementioned HK Express and cargo airline Air Hong Kong.
“Results from the Group’s associates, the majority of which are recognised three months in arrears (and which, in some cases, have already been announced by the associates), included losses,” Lau added at the time.
Nevertheless, it will report a one-time non-cash gain of HKD1.9 billion ($243.3 million) as a result of reducing its ownership in Air China from 18.13% to 16.26%. The airline’s full-year financial report for 2022 included a non-cash gain announcement that was made in January 2023. We anticipate that the Group will achieve a consolidated profit for the first half of 2023 taking into account everything mentioned above as well as the offsetting impact of associate results, which are announced three months in arrears.
Cathay Pacific operated 18,101 flights (137.9% more than in H1 2022) and carried 7.8 million passengers during the first half of 2023, an increase of 2,230% over the same period in 2022.
Regarding the passenger results for the first quarter of 2023, Lau stated: “We are glad to see that our travel business continued to perform well in June. On June 25, we passed 60,000 passengers carried in a single day for the first time since the pandemic, marking a new milestone.
READ MORE: https://bangkokone.news
SOURCE: http://ch-aviation.com
