Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. marked up another key COVID recovery milestone on Friday, announcing that it will buy back the remaining half of the HK$19.5 billion or $2.5 billion in preference shares the government lent to help keep it afloat during the pandemic.
The shares' full redemption, which will happen at the end of this month, also means the exit of two government-appointed observers to Cathay's board. Cathay had earlier said that it planned to make its second and final repayment by July.
The government earned HK$2.4 billion in dividends over the period.
Although travel is booming and plane seats are mostly full, passenger traffic at Cathay still isn't back to what it was before the pandemic. The airline is operating at around 80 per cent of pre-COVID levels and expects the restoration of flight levels to come by the first quarter of next year.
Cathay has been cautious to not add capacity back too fast after late last year starting to incur the wrath of the government and passengers for mass flight cancellations when it didn't have enough pilots to roster on duty.
However there are some signs Cathay is growing more optimistic about restoring flights more quickly. It announced the return of services to Cairns in Australia and Ningbo in China's Zhejiang province earlier this month and is also reconnecting flights to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia after a hiatus of several years.
