Dallas to Asia is becoming an increasingly hot international ticket to ride, and North Texans now have more options available to make the trip.
Late Thursday night, a Boeing Airbus A350-1000 taxied down the runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the maiden voyage of Cathay Pacific’s new nonstop flights between DFW and Hong Kong International Airport.
It’s the carrier’s first foray into the U.S. South and the only existing connection between Texas and Hong Kong.
The 16-plus hour journey from Dallas to Hong Kong will run four times per week on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Cathay Pacific will be in good company, with EVA Air launching its first nonstop service to Taipei in October.
Co-founded by Texas native Roy C. Farrell in 1946, Cathay Pacific — one of Asia’s largest freight carriers — now has six U.S. destinations with the creation of the DFW-HKG connection, which helps the company achieve its ambitions of topping 100 passenger destinations this year.
Lavinia Lau, Cathay’s chief customer and commercial officer, told reporters at a Fort Worth event that the airline “has been looking at this particular point for many years,” but chose the current moment to execute, given increasing U.S. ties to other international travel hotspots.
“We think that this is an area where …it can become a new cash flow area perhaps,” Lau said, adding that “having a DFW flight is not just [about] connecting these two cities. We want to look beyond on both sides. Look beyond both sides. So from DFW, we also want to attract customers coming from other parts of the U.S. and also Central and South America.”
In the face of macroeconomic headwinds stemming from newly implemented U.S. tariffs, inbound foreign traffic to the U.S. has been on the decline. However, Americans still continue to flock abroad.
Lau told reporters on Wednesday that tariffs have “brought in a lot of uncertainties,” but Cathay Pacific is monitoring fallout “very closely.”
In addition, Cathay plans to ramp up more North American flights this summer, with more connections to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago. Canada will also see a rise in service, with 17 weekly trips to Vancouver and 18 to Toronto.
