The carrier will operate up to four London flights a day over the coming months as demand rebounds, particularly UK-bound student traffic.

Load factor on London flights in September was 96% as Cathay increased the number of flights operated between Hong Kong and the UK from 111 in August to 134.

"London Heathrow will see a substantial increase in passenger flights in November and December," said Cathay. "An additional 31,500 seats will be offered over the two months, and on certain days in December we will be operating four flights a day.

"Customers can also look forward to the return of our first-class offering on our prime London Heathrow flight, CX251/CX252, starting 5 and 6 December respectively."

Cathay Pacific carried 265,845 passengers in September – double (101%) the number it did in September 2021. However, this is still 89% down on September 2019.

The airline said the rebound owed to the "positive impact" of the further easing of Hong Kong’s travel restrictions and quarantine requirements, including the removal of mandatory hotel quarantine for locally based air crew on 10 September and for travellers arriving in Hong Kong from 26 September.

"Cathay Pacific’s travel business continued to show improvement in September, helped by student traffic from both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland," said chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam.

"Overall passenger numbers further increased month-on-month to more than 8,800 per day, while load factor was 72.5%. Passenger flight capacity stood at about 16% of pre-pandemic levels."