Hong Kong's No.1 carrier Cathay Pacific said Monday it is restoring more flights to its schedule and will operate at around 90 percent of normal capacity in August.

The move comes as the airline rebuilds passenger traffic through Hong Kong in anticipation of operating a full schedule by the end of September.

While passenger numbers are increasing and load factors to many destinations are running quite high, the intense competition among airlines is in the meantime bringing fares down and keeping yields at a low level, said Cathay Pacific.

Like other Hong Kong-based carriers, Cathay was hit gravely by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak which started in mid-March, infecting over 1,800 people and killing at almost 300.

Cathay carried 459,627 passengers in June, up from 243,976 in May, but still down 54.5 percent on the number carried in June last year.

For the first six months of the year, Cathay carried one-third fewer passengers than it did in the same period last year.

(People's Daily July 29, 2003)