Cathay spurns budget route to health as CE bets on service

Cathay isn’t going to embrace the discount-fare revolution. Undaunted by the worst half-year loss in at least 2 decades, declining passenger numbers and cheaper fares, Cathay Pacific’s new CE Rupert Hogg rejected suggestions for a budget carrier with an emphatic no. Instead, he plans to focus on better services such as new lounges in major airports, offering Wi-Fi on board planes, more dining options and self-check-in facilities to nurse the carrier back to financial health. “Broadly speaking, we have no plans to start a low-cost airline,” Hogg said Wednesday. “But we compete with low cost carriers on lots of different routes and clearly we have to have a proposition that price sensitive travellers, new travellers and first time travellers find attractive and prefer to fly on our airline relative to the alternatives.” <br/>