Dragonair posts Double-Digit Growth for First Nine Months of Year

Dragonair flew 3,692,930 passengers in the first three quarters of 2005, a jump of 11% over the same period last year. Freight shipments climbed 15.8% to 278,301 tonnes in the first nine months of the year when compared with January-September 2004.

“This is very healthy growth given the general background against which we have been operating,” said CEO Stanley Hui. “We are facing greater competition, higher operating costs mainly due to oil prices and a recent period of bad weather, so the performance to date is very pleasing.

“Many of those factors will persist into the fourth quarter – especially the pressure from high oil prices, which appear to be having a dampening effect on travel – but we remain cautiously optimistic about the coming months and the year as a whole in terms of headline numbers.”

Meanwhile, the number of passengers flying in September rose by a slight 0.3% year-on-year to 416,417. The month-on-month figure registered a decline of 7.1% due to the larger volume of summer holiday traffic in August.

“Business traveller numbers were strong in September, but group travel declined significantly, as expected following the busier summer holiday season,” said Mr. Hui. “Overall market growth appears to have levelled off for now. And, in fact, the tour group market to the Mainland and to Thailand this summer was not as strong as expected.”

Cargo bounced back in September, posting a 6% rise month-on-month to 33,769 tonnes, while year-on-year growth was basically unchanged, at -0.2%.

“September is traditionally a better month than August for freight, and so it proved, although a few technical issues with aircraft during the month meant the level of shipments we carried was not a true reflection of the demand in the market for our services,” Mr. Hui said.

“Despite this, our New York route did particularly well, driven by demand for Asian exports in the US market.

“We remain optimistic about the coming months, which are usually a busy time for air shipments.”

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