Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. (CPA), more widely known as Cathay Pacific (Chinese: åę³°čŖē©ŗ; Jyutping: gwok3 taai3 hong4 hung1), is the flag carrier of Hong Kong, with its head office and main hub located at Hong Kong International Airport. The airline's operations and subsidiaries have scheduled passenger and cargo services to more than 190 destinations in more than 60 countries worldwide including codeshares and joint ventures. Cathay Pacific operates a fleet consisting of Airbus A320, Airbus A321, Airbus A321neo, Airbus A330, Airbus A350, and Boeing 777 aircraft. Cathay Pacific Cargo operates two models of the Boeing 747. Defunct wholly owned subsidiary airline Cathay Dragon, which stopped operations, previously flew to 44 destinations in the Asia-Pacific region from its Hong Kong base. In 2010, Cathay Pacific and Cathay Pacific Cargo, together with Dragonair (then Cathay Dragon), carried nearly 27 million passengers and over 1.8 million tons of cargo and mail.
The airline was founded on 24 September 1946 by Australian Sydney H. de Kantzow and American Roy C. Farrell. The airline celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2016; and as of March 2021[update], its major shareholders are Swire Pacific, with a 42.3% stake and Air China, with a 28.2% stake.
Cathay Pacific is the world's fifth largest airline measured by sales, and fourteenth largest measured by market capitalisation. In 2010, Cathay Pacific became the world's largest international cargo airline, along with main hub Hong Kong International Airport as the world's busiest airport measured by cargo traffic. The company slogan is Move beyond.
It is one of the founding members of the Oneworld alliance.
Cathay Pacific Airways was founded on 24 September 1946 in Hong Kong. Sydney "Syd" de Kantzow, Roy Farrell, Neil Buchanan, Donald Brittan Evans and Robert "Bob" Stanley Russell were the initial shareholders. Buchanan and Russell already worked for de Kantzow and Farrell at Roy Farrell Import-Export Company, the predecessor of Cathay Pacific, which was initially headquartered in Shanghai. Both de Kantzow and Farrell were ex-air force pilots who had flown the Hump, a route over the Himalayan mountains. Farrell purchased the airline's first aircraft, a Douglas DC-3, nicknamed Betsy, at Bush Field, New York City in 1945.: 29 The company began freight services on 28 January 1946 from Sydney to Shanghai, after Farrell and Russell flew the plane to Australia and obtained a license to carry freight (but not passengers) earlier that month.: 36–37 Its first commercial flight was a shipment of Australian goods.: 37 The profitable business soon attracted attention from the Republic of China government officials.: 44 After several instances where the company's planes were detained by authorities in Shanghai,: 44 on 11 May 1946 the company relocated, flying its two planes to Hong Kong. Farrell and de Kantzow re-registered their business in Hong Kong on 24 September 1946 as Cathay Pacific Airways Limited, while another sister company, The Roy Farrell Export Import Company (Hong Kong) Limited, was incorporated on 28 August 1946 and chartered some flights from Cathay.: 58 (According to International Directory of Company Histories, two companies were formed for tax purposes.)
They named the airline Cathay, the ancient name given to China, and Pacific because Farrell speculated that they would one day fly across the Pacific: 56 (which happened in the 1970s). Moreover, to avoid the name "Air Cathay" as it had already been used in a comic.: 55 The Chinese name for the company ("åę³°") was not settled on until the 1950s. It comes from a Chinese idiom meaning "peace and prosperity" and was at the time often used by other businesses called "Cathay" in English.
According to legend, the airline's unique name was conceived by Farrell and some foreign correspondents at the bar of the Manila Hotel,: 55 while another narrative was the name was taken in the Cathay Hotel in Shanghai Bund, during drinking and brainstorming, and choosing Cathay was to avoid the word China in the airline name.: 53 On Cathay Pacific's maiden voyage, de Kantzow and Peter Hoskins flew from Sydney to Hong Kong via Manila.: 53 The airline initially flew routes between Hong Kong, Sydney, Manila, Singapore, Shanghai, Saigon, Bangkok,: 58 with additional chartered destinations.: 59 The airline grew quickly. By 1947, it had added another five DC-3s and two Vickers Catalina seaplanes to its fleet.: 234
In 1948, a new legal person of Cathay Pacific Airways was incorporated, with John Swire & Sons (now known as Swire Group), China Navigation Company, Australian National Airways being the new shareholders of the new entity, acquiring the assets from the old legal person; the old legal person, was renamed into Cathay Pacific Holdings, as well as retaining 10% shares of the new Cathay Pacific Airways. de Kantzow, Farrell and Russell were the shareholders of Cathay Pacific Holdings at that time. It was reported that the colonial British government of Hong Kong, required the airline was majority-owned by the British. Despite de Kantzow being a British subject through his Australian roots, Farrell was an American, thus forcing them to sell their majority stake.: 79 Under Swire's management, de Kantzow remained in the airline until 1951,: 123 while Farrell had sold his minority stake in Cathay Pacific soon after Swire's takeover in 1948, due to his wife's health problems.: 115 He returned to Texas and became a successful businessman.: 115
Swire later acquired 52% of Cathay Pacific Airways. As of 31 December 2017[update], the airline is still 45% owned by Swire Group through its subsidiary Swire Pacific Limited, as the largest shareholder. However, Swire Group also formed a shareholders' agreement with the second largest shareholder Air China (which was controlled by state-owned China National Aviation Holding), which Cathay Pacific and Air China had a cross ownership.: 41, 104
In the late 1940s, the Hong Kong government divided the local aviation market between Cathay Pacific and its only local competitor, the Jardine Matheson-owned Hong Kong Airways:: 117–118 Cathay Pacific was allocated routes to the south (including South-East Asia and Australia), while Hong Kong Airways was allocated routes to the north (including mainland China, Korea, and Japan). The situation changed with the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the Korean War, which reduced the viability of the northern routes. In 1959, Cathay Pacific acquired Hong Kong Airways, and became the dominant airline in Hong Kong.
Under Swire, another important sister company, HAECO, was established in 1950.: 130 Nowadays, it's one of the major aeroplane repair service companies of Hong Kong with divisions in other cities of China.
The airline prospered in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, and it purchased Hong Kong Airways, on 1 July 1959. Between 1962 and 1967, the airline recorded double digit growth on average every year and became one of the world's first airlines to operate international services to Fukuoka, Nagoya and Osaka in Japan. In 1964, it carried its one millionth passenger and acquired its first jet engine aircraft, the Convair 880. In 1967, it became an all jet airline with the replacement of its last Lockheed L-188 Electra with a Convair 880.
In the 1970s, Cathay Pacific installed a computerised reservation system and flight simulators. In 1971, Cathay Pacific Airways received the first Boeing aircraft 707-320B. By 1972 it had five 707s. The new aircraft colour was known as Brunswick green. In July 1976 it began operating a Boeing 707 freighter from Hong Kong to Seoul, Bangkok and Singapore.
In 1974, Cathay Pacific almost purchased the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 to open a new flight route. During the flight route application process with the British government, due to the pressure from the British government, Cathay Pacific changed the application to apply for a route from Hong Kong to London using a Boeing 747. The application was ultimately rejected. In 1979, the airline acquired its first Boeing 747 and applied for traffic rights to fly to London in 1980, with the first flight taking place on 16 July.
Expansion continued into the 1980s. In 1982, Cathay Pacific Airways introduced Cathay Pacific Cargo, which provided cargo service to ingratiate the trend of Hong Kong, becoming one of the largest re-export trading ports of the world. The airline's long-haul dedicated cargo services started a twice a week with Hong Kong-Frankfurt-London service operated jointly with Lufthansa. Cathay Pacific kept its service to Vancouver in 1983, with service on to San Francisco in 1986, when an industry-wide boom encouraged route growth to many European and North American centres including London, Brisbane, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, Zurich and Manchester.
On 15 May 1986, the airline went public and was listed in the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.
In January 1990, Cathay Pacific and its parent company, Swire Pacific, acquired a significant shareholding in Dragonair, and a 75% stake in cargo airline Air Hong Kong in 1994. In 1994, the airline launched a program to upgrade its passenger service, including a HK$23 million program to update its image. Its logo was updated in 1994 and again in 2014.
The airline began a fleet replacement program in the mid-1990s, which cost a total of US$9 billion. In 1996, CITIC Pacific increased its holdings in Cathay Pacific from 10% to 25%, and two other Chinese companies, CNAC(G) and CTS, also bought substantial holdings, while the Swire Group holding was reduced to 44%. According to the International Directory of Company Histories, the sale of a 12.5% stake of Cathay Pacific by Swire Pacific to a Chinese state-owned company was regarded "as evidence of China's sincerity in maintaining the prosperity of Hong Kong."
In 1997, Cathay Pacific updated the registration numbers and flags on its fleet in conjunction with the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China.
On 21 May 1998, Cathay Pacific took the first delivery of the Boeing 777-300 at a ceremony in Everett. On 21 September 1998, Cathay Pacific, together with American Airlines, British Airways, Canadian Airlines, and Qantas, co-founded the Oneworld airline alliance. Cathay Pacific temporarily took over the domestic and international operations of Philippine Airlines during its two-week shutdown from 26 September to 7 October 1998. The airline was hurt by the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, but recorded a record HK$5 billion profit in 2000.
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