Cathay Pacific Brief History

Cathay Pacific Brief History

The Cathay Pacific airline with headquarter in Hong Kong was founded 23 September 1946 by American Roy Clinton Farrell and Australian Sydney Hugh de Kantzow. This airline is the biggest operator in Hong Kong and one of the leading in Asia. During the first 15 years Cathay Pacific operated only short range roughs in Asia and Oceania to Manila, Shanghai, Bangkok and Singapore. In 60s was lunched first international rough to the three cities in Japan. In this early years fleet didn’t have great variable, mainly there were McDonald Douglas DC3 in his military version C-47 “Skytrain” and were used for cargo needs. The first jet aircraft was Convair 880 which became a part of the fleet in 1964.

Upspring period started in the end of 1979. First B747-200 joined to the airline and the first routs to Europe (London) and North America were established. Laky to Cathay Pacific in early 80s the significant increase in Asia economic (basically it was global increase), pushed up the passenger capacity and cargo loads. It was the time of creation new networks all over the world, and which is important, with Europe and North America markets. At this period the airline started to carry out the first million passengers per year, nowadays the same number relating to one month.

However, during the time period from 1997 to 2003 the Asian economic crisis, epidemic of avian flu and SARS virus cut down passenger traffic, made some flights completely empty. Nevertheless, even in such depression times company had positive index in earnings, only in 1998 catch the profit margin loss almost in 5 million HK$. In early decades Cathay gave the preference to second hand aircraft such as Convair 880, TriStar (purchased from Eastern Airlines) and all 707s which were used till the end of 90s (http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_CA/about-us/about-our-airline/history.html).

The Cathay Pacific fleet basically consist of different types of Boeing 777, 747 (87 plane in total) and Airbus 330-300, 340-300 (50 in total). 99% of all B747 are cargo jets. Furthermore, it is lunched a program of replacement retired aircraft by new one. (According to http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_US/about-us/press-room/fact-sheet.html). For instance, A340-300 will be replacement by A350-900 and A350-1000 as well as B777-200. Also, the 21 new 777-9X will arrived in 2021 and it will be the first B777X customer in Asia. Couple of new B747 cargo jets are expected. Overall, 72 new aircraft now in order for delivery up to 2024. However, the average fleet age is only 7.7 years. (2015 Interim Report http://www.cathaypacific.com/content/dam/cx/about-us/investor-relations/interim-annual-reports/en/2015_cx_interim_report_en.pdf)