Cathay Pacific
flag carrier of Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific Airways Limited, or simply Cathay Pacific, 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 its subsidiaries have scheduled passenger and cargo services to more than 190 destinations and more than 60 countries worldwide including codeshares and joint ventures.
Cathay Pacific operates a fleet consisting of Airbus A321neo, Airbus A330, Airbus A350, and Boeing 777 aircraft. Cathay Cargo operates two models of Boeing 747, the B747-400ERF and B747-8F. Defunct wholly owned subsidiary airline Cathay Dragon, which ceased operations in 2020, operated to 44 destinations in the Asia-Pacific region from its Hong Kong base. In 2010, Cathay Pacific and Cathay Cargo (previously Cathay Pacific Cargo), together with Cathay Dragon, transported nearly 27 million passengers and more than 1.8 million tons of cargo and mail.
Cathay Pacific was founded on 24 September 1946 by Australian Sydney H. de Kantzow and American Roy C. Farrell. As of May 2026, its major shareholders are Swire Pacific and Air China.
Cathay Pacific is one of the founding members of Oneworld alliance. As of 2025, Skytrax ranks the airline as a 5-star airline and as the third best airline in the world.
History
1946–1960: The early years
Cathay Pacific Airways was founded on 24 September 1946 in Hong Kong.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cathay Pacific” is flag carrier of Hong Kong. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cathay, Pacific and flag, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q32141. VIAF identifies the subject as 248732941. The Library of Congress control number is n93031264. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 2010, 1946 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cathay Pacific” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.