Cathay Pacific

arrived in Dallas/Fort Worth on April 24, becoming its eighth passenger destination in North America. It replaced American Airlines on the very long oneworld route, serving it between 2014 and 2020. Yet, the Texas hub has fallen off the country’s 10 busiest widebody airports list despite Cathay’s entry.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport

IATA/ICAO Code

DFW/KDFW

Country

United States

CEO

Sean Donohue

Due to American’s massive presence, Dallas/Fort Worth is the world’s busiest oneworld hub. Cathay is the latest in a long line of members that now serve it. Other recent carriers include Fiji Airways (2024), Finnair (2022; it’ll have up to 11 weekly flights during the summer), and Iberia (2022; which will fly overnight from Europe later in 2025). However, British Airways temporarily pulled out, while Qantas’ A380s return to the airport in August.

Cathay Pacific Arrives In Dallas/Fort Worth

After over five years, Texas has passenger flights to/from Hong Kong again. This time, it is because of Cathay, with Flightradar24 showing the inaugural round-trip service deployed the 4.2-year-old Airbus A350-1000, B-LXO (shown above), delivered to the carrier amid the pandemic in 2021. It will continue to fly the 334-seat variant through the summer, but OAG data shows it’ll shift to 280-seat A350-900s in the winter. This will help with loads, fares, yields, and performance in the off-season.

Rerouting to avoid Russian airspace means this route has a maximum block time of 16h 40m. By this measure, it is Cathay’s new longest route in its network. However, based on May-December 2025 data, it is ‘only’ Dallas’s fifth-longest nonstop service, after Melbourne (maximum block time of 17h 45m), Sydney (17h 20m), Brisbane (17h 15m), and Doha (17h 00m). Of course, the results would be different by distance.

The Local Dallas-Hong Kong Market Is Fairly Small But High-Yielding

Cathay’s passengers will come from various sources. The local market is relatively small, with booking data showing 24,000 round-trip passengers. However, it is high-yielding, with an average one-way fare of $1,824 across all passengers/classes, reflecting strong premium demand. Traffic volume will come from connections in Hong Kong (more on this below), connections to American flights in Dallas (Houston, Orlando, Miami, and Atlanta will be key), and those who, despite the length, transfer to different flights at both hubs.

The above figure shows the departure and arrival times of Cathay’s North American passenger services in Hong Kong. Relating this to its Dallas schedule shows that its 16:05 departure time from Asia is not during its busiest departure bank, but its 04:35 arrival time (ouch!) is amid the top arrival bank.

Important Dallas markets via Hong Kong will be Ho Chi Minh City (56,000), Shanghai (44,000), Manila (36,000), Bangkok (27,000), Taipei (24,000), and Singapore (22,000). Lower-yielding South Asian cities don’t connect with competitive waiting times. EVA Air will also target some of these markets when it begins flying to Dallas in October.

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They have over 700 daily departures.

Cathay Pacific’s Passenger Aircraft Now Serve 8 North American Airports

For now, let’s look at high-level numbers. According to Cathay’s schedule submission to OAG, the carrier plans 3,875 one-way flights to North America between May and December 2025, down by 4% compared to before the pandemic in the same months in 2019. However, due to much greater use of the A350-1000, capacity is flat as seats per flight have grown from 303 to 317.

Six years ago, Cathay had up to 19 daily flights to the US/Canada, which has been reduced to a maximum of 18 now, as summarized below. This is despite having two fewer routes than in 2019. Yes, it introduced Dallas, but its frames were seen in Newark, Seattle, and Washington Dulles before the pandemic.