Originally Posted by
TomYoung
None of that is an order. The combined fleet of Cathay and the Dragon at the end of 2019 was 183 passenger aircraft and 20 freighters. At the end of 2022 the freighters were unchanged but the passenger fleet was down161.Accoding to Planespotters it is now down to 160. If Cathay is to get back to 100% of 2019 operation by the end of 2024 they must have been operating inefficiently in 2019. And all the while the old craft get older. If they order now it will probably take several before even an A330-800 could be delivered and one needs almost two of them to replace one 777-300 with its 438 seats.
You are right that they operated inefficiently in 2019, especially after August 2019 when the social unrest affected the tourism industry significantly...But yes the capacity of CX itself is very unlikely to get back to pre-pandemic level, because CX allocated more resources to UO after the pandemic...