Cathay Pacific has cut its earnings outlook due to Hong Kong protests

Cathay Pacific is one of the airlines that has suffered heavily due to the protests that have now continued for months in Hong Kong. It all started when the Hong Kong government brought forward an extradition bill in the parliament. According to the bill, the Hong Kong government would be able to extradite criminals to China. However, this was met with a strong objection from citizens of Hong Kong and they took to the streets to oppose this bill.

At first, the Hong Kong government refused to withdraw the bill and decided to fight the protestors with force. However, the growing protests forced the Hong Kong government to withdraw the bill. But the protests in Hong Kong are still taking place even today due to the demands of protestors. Their demands are that the action taken against protestors should be investigated and offenders should be punished.

Since everyone now knows about the Hong Kong protests, no one wants to visit Hong Kong anymore. For this reason, Cathay Pacific has had to lower its earnings outlook which it had set out at the start of this year. Hong Kong’s airline said in a statement that its “Second-half financial results will be lower than those of the first half” as per Bloomberg’s report. The airline also reported that there is a significant decline in inbound bookings for the rest of the year and they have carried a lesser number of passengers a second month in a row.

In a statement, Cathay Pacific’s Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Ronald Lam said: “Our expectation is that the rest of 2019 will remain incredibly challenging for the airline,”. He also added that “The mainland China market has been hit especially hard. Intense competition together with an increasing reliance on transit passengers over the short term has continued to apply additional pressure on yield.“