Cathay Pacific intends to make a decision on its future mid-sized widebody fleet by the end of the year, as it maintains its full recovery projection for the first quarter of 2025.
Cathay chief executiuve Ronald Lam says the carrier is in the middle of the fleet renewal campaign, with a decision to be announced within this year. The airline also has not decided yet how many aircraft it is looking to order.
The new aircraft will likely replace its older Airbus A330-300s. The airline operates 43 A330s, some of which will undergo a retrofit with new regional cabin products from 2026.
Lam’s comments, made on the sidelines of the IATA Annual General Meeting in Dubai, follow a series of aircraft orders in the past year. In December 2023, it placed a $2.7 billion order for six A350 freighters, while in September, it signed for 32 A321neo/A320neo narrowbodies, firming up options from a 2017 purchase agreement.
The mid-sized fleet renewal campaign was first floated in November 2022, and Lam confirmed Cathay was looking at new mid-sized aircraft during a FlightGlobal interview a year later.
Separately, Lam says Cathay and its low-cost unit HK Express are on track to fully recover its passenger flights by the first-quarter of 2025. The airline group’s passenger flights are currently over 80% of pre-pandemic levels.
Cathay, which reported record annual profits for 2023, had previously expected to fully recover by end-2024. However a spate of flight cancellations at the start of the year – owing to staffing shortages – had led it to push the timeline back by three months.
