Good afternoon. Welcome to Cathay Pacific Airways Limited 2022 annual results analyst briefing. Let me introduce myself. My name is Andy Wong, the General Manager, Corporate Affairs for Cathay Pacific. Whether you're attending in person or via webcast, it is a pleasure to see you all, and thank you for joining us. Introducing our speakers for today, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ronald Lam. General Manager, Finance and Performance, Mr. Christopher Buckley. We'll begin the presentation by Mr. Lam and Mr. Buckley first, after which we'll open the floor to questions. All of you will have received a copy of the presentation slides via email. Those of you attending in person can also pick up a copy at reception. Without further ado, let me invite Mr. Lam to start the presentations. Ronald, please.
First of all, good afternoon, everyone, especially those here in the room. I'm very excited to see all of you face-to-face finally after three years. This is the first analyst briefing in my new role as well, so I'm gonna give you a briefing about our strategy forward before I pass over to Chris, who will talk more about the 2022 annual results. Before I do that, I just wanna say happy International Women's Day. I'm very happy to share with you that Cathay, as a group, we are elected to be included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. This is a very important achievement from our perspective, because this index is only for listed company who have demonstrated strong disclosure and performance when it comes to gender equity. This is a very good recognition for our effort.
I'm happy to share also that, from April onwards, our new executive team, consisting of 14 directors and executive directors, we would achieve a 50/50 split between female and male for the first time in our history. I'm very proud to be working with such a diverse and capable team, moving forward in C athay Pacific. Today's agenda, I would focus on sharing with you how we're gonna rebuild Cathay for Hong Kong, i.e. our strategy moving forward in the next few years. Then I'll hand over to Chris, who would walk you through in more details about the results and outlook. Rebuilding Cathay for Hong Kong is a very important task, facing us as a team, within Cathay. First of all, there's a lot we need to do to rebuild Cathay.
Cathay is probably the hardest hit company or airline in the whole world, in the last three years. First of all, we didn't have a domestic market which didn't require crossing the border, so many other airlines, they have a domestic market to keep them going during COVID. Secondarily, when it comes to international opening, Hong Kong was one of the later ones to open up. We started late, and we started low. There's a lot of rebuild we need to do within Cathay for Hong Kong as an international aviation hub. Before that, I think we have achieved a lot, and I have a rather fun video that I would like to kick off the analyst briefing with to share with you. Thank you. Hope you enjoy it.
After 3 brutal years of the pandemic, I'm glad to say that we can finally put the pandemic behind us, and we are firmly on a journey of rebuilding Cathay for Hong Kong. First of all, in rebuilding our capacity, I'm glad to report that we are on a good track. Although, as I said, we started low and we started late, but we are catching up very, very fast. This chart shows our capacity projections for the next 2 years. Starting with December last year, we already achieved 1/3 of the passenger capacity across the group between Cathay Pacific and HK Express. On the cargo fronts, at the end of last year, we were already at 2/3 of our pre-pandemic cargo capacity.
Quickly moving into January, I've already shared before, we have exceeded 40% of passenger capacity as a group already. Moving into March, this is the latest. I'm glad to share that on the passenger front between Cathay Pacific and HK Express combined, we have reached a very important milestone in our journey of rebuild. We have exceeded 50% of our passenger capacity in this month already. Cargo continue to climb up. We are already running a full schedule on the freighter front. With the resumption of the passenger flight, which we can carry cargo in the passenger flight belly, cargo business will benefit as well. Overall, we remain on course towards our projected target for end of this year, 70% across the group on the passenger side and 85% on the cargo front.
As we mentioned before, 2024 is our target year where we will have to resume 100% for both passenger and cargo as a Group. How are we gonna go about in rebuilding Cathay for Hong Kong? Here, I would like to give you a brief overview on our strategy moving forward. Throughout the last few years, as an executive team, we have spent a lot of time not just fighting the pandemic to survive, but we've also spent time to look at what opportunity there is for us to come out stronger after the pandemic. I'm very glad to share that after these two years, we've now got a very clear and refreshed strategy to drive our Group moving forward.
We have also, we organize ourselves into four lines of business across the whole Group: premium travel under the brand Cathay Pacific, cargo under the brand Cathay Cargo, low-cost travel under the brand HK Express, and also lifestyle under the Cathay premium travel lifestyle brand. The following slides, I will give you a brief overview about our key developments in each of the four lines of business. First of all, Cathay Pacific, our premium travel arm. From this year onwards, we would have 32 new aircraft deliveries due to go. These are new generation, fuel-efficient aircraft, and we're gonna put our premium products onto these new aircraft, including our flagship 777-9 aircraft that is to be delivered from 2025. At the same time, apart from fleet investment, we will continue to invest in our cabin product and lounges with the most thoughtfully designed experience.
Throughout the pandemic, we continue to invest in our products and services. Many travelers now, they got the opportunity to travel back on Cathay, and we've received positive feedback in many of our services and products. Although, as we rebuild, there's still some challenges within certain areas of our services, like our customer care center is a focus area that we're working on to improve our service level to bring back to the usual high standard that we have been having. Dining experience will be a key focus for our premium travel experience moving forward. Being the home carrier of Hong Kong, Hong Kong flavors is gonna be one key theme in our dining experience, both at our lounges as well as in our flying experiences.
Recently, we've announced a partnership, for example, with a homegrown Michelin-star restaurant called Duddell's that our customers, moving forward, they will be able to enjoy our signature dishes partnering with this restaurant. On the cargo front, traditionally, we've been very strong in cargo, and in particular, in the past 3 years, cargo business is what has kept us going as an airline. We performed very strongly in the last 3 years. Indeed, Hong Kong is the number 1 air cargo hub in the whole world still. I'm very glad to also share with you that Cathay Cargo has been nominated as the Cargo Airline of the Year by a very reputable magazine called Air Transport World for our achievement in the cargo trade in 2022. This is a very great honor.
Now we are also the number one cargo airline of the world, according to this award. I think we are very glad to gain that position, and we look forward to providing more premium service to our cargo shippers and forwarders moving forward. Earlier this year, we have also announced a rebrand of our cargo business, moving into a new brand called Cathay Cargo to align with our master brand, Cathay. As you can see, later this year, you will see a new livery painted on our freighters. A very smart, lively livery, as you can see on the picture. We're also the first airline and cargo terminal in Hong Kong to have offer a upstream intermodal cargo acceptance facility in partnership with Hong Kong International Airport in GBA, Greater Bay Area.
In Dongguan, we have already opened up our upstream cargo acceptance facilities. This is one of our strategy into going deeper into the Greater Bay Area on the cargo front. This is really encouraging news for us. On the low-cost travel front, HK Express is the vehicle we use to provide low-cost travel to our customer spectrum. I'm glad to announce that, despite being hard hit by the pandemic, now HK Express is taking off very fast. In fact, by the end of this month, in terms of frequency, HK Express will already resume to 100% of pre-pandemic level. This is a very exciting milestone for our teams at HK Express.
It's also very exciting for our travelers in Hong Kong, in particular, bringing all different sorts of destinations that would give special experience for our young up-and-coming travelers in various market. Earlier this year, we've also announced a brand refresh to our low-cost travel arm. As you can see on the screen, this is their new livery. In April, we're gonna launch our new livery on a new aircraft, A321neo, the first ever A321neo to arrive into HK Express. This is one of the 16 aircraft that will be deliver in the coming years for our low-cost travel arm. Last but not the least, our new lifestyle business front under the brand name Cathay. Our co-brand card with Mastercard, whether it's in Hong Kong or in Chinese mainland, has been taking up very strongly after travel opened up.
With the travel sentiment improvement, we are seeing very strong performance with our credit cards partnerships worldwide. Also, we've opened our first ever Cathay branded retail space late last year in Cityp laza to showcase our retail shopping experience to our customers on physical shop. This is in conjunction with our e-commerce shop that is already going very strong online already. This is the O2O, online to offline, collaboration that we're having with our shopping business, a important pillar under our lifestyle line of business. Hopefully by now more people would have noticed, we've also launched our wellness offering using Asia Miles as a currency. Now our customer can earn miles by pursuing healthy activities like drinking water, running, doing yoga activities. This is a fun app we have launched during the pandemic.
Underpinning these 4 main lines of business, there are also 3 key areas of development that we're gonna focus on in the coming few years that will be applicable across all 4 lines of business. The first area is about extending our home market from Hong Kong into the 9 mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area. Digital and sustainability is another 2 areas of focus. We've been doing digital and sustainability for many years already. What is different is in our new strategies that we want to take a leadership position in both areas. It's that leadership word that is new in these 2 areas that we want to pursue in the coming few years. Just some more sharing about the 3 areas.
Under Greater Bay Area strategy, this year we're gonna launch major brand campaign to reignite the desire to travel in the Greater Bay Area market. We're gonna put in more investment into our brand awareness and preference into this important market for us. Another key area of focus for the Greater Bay Area is how we can seamlessly connect passengers to and from Hong Kong International Airport into the Greater Bay Area. We are having different modes of transportation for our customers, and one main mode of transportation is through ferry. Shekou is one of our biggest ferry terminal within the entire Greater Bay Area.
I'm glad to announce that later this year, we're gonna open up our first ever flagship lounge at the Shekou ferry terminal, so that our front-end customers and our high tier members will be able to enjoy our very famous flagship lounge service when they take ferry from the Shekou ferry terminal. Very exciting development indeed. Also later this year, we're gonna make step changes into our land-to-air connection from the Greater Bay Area into Hong Kong International Airport. Just like the ferry, later this year, if you take a bus from the bridge into Hong Kong IA, you can go straight into the air side without landing Hong Kong. Your baggage will be also taken upstream and then sent seamlessly into the baggage system without the customer having to worry about their baggage.
This is a step change that Hong Kong IA will implement, and then Cathay, being the home carrier of Hong Kong, definitely will promote this service to our customers. Very exciting developments that we're gonna see in the development of the Greater Bay Area market. On the digital leadership fronts, we are already investing a lot in the past few years on innovative data usage like machine learning, artificial intelligence, as well as innovative technology that we are exploring and implementing in big scale across our business as well. Very importantly, apart from data and technology, is how we work. In the past 18 months, we've been implementing Agile at scale in Cathay to promote empowerment and innovation within our workforce.
Now Cathay Agile is already applicable to a large number of business area with at least several hundred people participating full-time in these agile teams. On the sustainability fronts, we have already announced our target to aim for net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as well as 10% usage of sustainable aviation fuel by 2030. We're making progress through towards these target. First of all, we are the first major corporate to have launched a corporate SAF program in Asia. Thanks to various partner support, we are going to expand this program further this year. By the end of last year, we have already met our last target set for reducing single-use plastic by half. In fact, we have exceeded the target.
The usage of single-use plastic per passenger indeed has reduced by 56% by the end of last year. Fantastic achievement here. As I've already mentioned in the beginning, from a gender equality angle, we've also made progress as well. That's my very quick download on the high level strategy moving forward for the Cathay group in the next few years. I would like to end with a video taken by our entire executive team to show you our vision and ambition moving forward in the next few years. Thank you.
Our vision is to become one of the world's greatest service brands. What does this mean?
It's about putting our customer at the center of everything we do.
It means understanding what our customers need, creating experiences that they value.
Making it seamless for them to travel the world.
When they travel with us, we surround them with thoughtful service with the best possible experience to match. One designed to simplify their journeys and maximize their comfort and well-being.
We enrich lives. We curate lifestyle offerings and experiences that inspire, delight, and surprise.
We deliver shipments that matter. We use digital solutions to keep our customers informed and connected.
We leverage our expertise to advance society, our communities, and the world we live in.
We make a stand to lead the way with sustainability solutions for the future, our future.
Safety is intrinsic to everything we do, and at the very core of our vision are our customers.
By placing customers at the center of everything we do, we will become one of the world's greatest service brands.
Thank you. On that note, let me hand over to Chris to give you more details about last year's results and the outlook for this year. Thank you.
Thanks, Ronald. Good afternoon to everyone joining today. We're glad to have you here. It's wonderful to be back in person and to see so many old friends and friendly faces out from behind the mask. It's a great privilege to be able to share some of the highlights of Cathay's result for 2022, as we begin to emerge from what has been, you know, very much the most difficult period in our 76-year history. Today, I will start by touching on some of the highlights of the results. I'll briefly discuss how the year unfolded, and then we'll look in a little bit more detail at how different parts of the business performed.
We've released a lot of information today, I do wanna try and preserve some time for questions, I won't really talk too much on every slide. I'll try and skip through some of them quite quickly. Hopefully, you guys will be able to take away the information and absorb it in your own time, and I hope it's helpful. In 2022, Cathay Pacific Group achieved consolidated revenue of HKD 51 million for the year, which was 12% higher than 2021. As a management team, we're probably most focused on the Cathay Pacific, plus subsidiaries, our line of performance. This is where we exercise the most control and the most influence over the outcomes. At this level, we generated a loss of HKD 255 million across the full year.
It's always disappointing to generate a loss, of course, encouragingly, this was a reasonably strong improvement compared to 2021. Of course, we never ignore our shareholders and investors, they're, I'm sure, much more interested in the full consolidated result for the business. This was a loss of HKD 6.5 billion, this was worse than 2021. Given the challenges and uncertainties of the pandemic, we've continued to maintain really a greater than normal level of unrestricted liquidity for the past few years. This continued. At December, we had available unrestricted liquidity of HKD 27.2 billion. Slightly lower than the level at December 2021, more or less in line with where we were in June. Across the year, we have continued to pay down debt.
In the second half of the year, we began to generate some more healthy cash flows and we were cash flow generative in the second half of the year. Together, that's seen our gearing reduce to 0.71 times, which is comfortably below our covenant level of 2. It's very much a boring cliché, but for Cathay, 2022 can really be described as a year of two halves. As we meet here today in person without masks, it's very easy to forget where we were this time 12 months ago. At the beginning of 2022, in fact, the first half of 2022 was completely dominated by the emergence of the Omicron variant.
In January, there was an increase in the various border restrictions that affected both our passengers and our crew as they traveled around the world. Both the passenger business and the cargo business were impacted, and each experienced their own particular low points. In the first week of January 2021, we canceled all of our freighter services for a week. Later on the 12th of March last year, our passenger business carried just 58 passengers. 58 people, which is approximately the same number we have sitting in the room today for our full business on the day. During these months, our passenger capacity fell from around 11% of pre-pandemic levels in December 2021 to just 2% between January and April.
The cargo capacity are similarly reduced from around two-thirds of pre-pandemic levels in December 2021, to just 21% in January last year. For Cathay Pacific and our subsidiaries, this resulted in a HKD 2.5 billion loss for the first half of the year, and saw our monthly operating cash flows revert from a small cash flow generative position in the second half of 2021 to once again, monthly operating cash burn in the early months of 2022. Our major associates were similarly affected by the Omicron variant, and their performance similarly suffered as ours did, and the full consolidated loss in the first half of 2022 was HKD 5 billion. From May, the travel restrictions started to progressively ease, and we enjoyed this trend throughout the second half of the year.
This has proven to be a significant turning point and really marked the start and the commencement of a long rebuild for Cathay Pacific. Across the second half of 2022, we've worked hard to add capacity as quickly as possible and to reconnect Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong with many destinations around the world. Our passenger flight capacity increased from approximately 10% in June last year to 32% by the end of the year. We were serving 58 destinations, which was double the number of destinations we served at the beginning of 2022. Our cargo capacity also recovered to where we ended 2021 in December 2021, and had us operating the full freighter schedule.
This flowed through to more encouraging results in the second half of the year, where Cathay Pacific and its subsidiaries have achieved a profit of HKD 2.3 billion for the 6 months end of December. Operating cash flow has been positive since May, an average HKD 1.1 billion per month across the second half of the year. We recognize our share of profits and associates. Sorry, we recognize our share of profits and losses from the major associates 3 months in arrears, and therefore, there will be a lag before our results benefit from their own recoveries. This has impacted the full consolidated loss for the second half of 2022, which was HKD 1.5 billion. I won't dwell too long on this slide. The numbers largely speak for themselves.
One thing I would like to briefly point out is that if we add together the group's losses across the past three years, they total a cumulative loss now of HKD 33.7 billion. HKD 33.7 billion. This is really an incredible figure. What's even more important is that it only begins to demonstrate the impact of the pandemic on Cathay Pacific. There's a whole greater story on the impact that this period has had on our people, and our customers. In particular, our flight crew has suffered huge personal impositions over the past few years, and I would personally like to thank them now for their service to Hong Kong and to Cathay Pacific over this period. We are now growing more confident that the pandemic may be behind us.
We are very encouraged by the improving trend, which is illustrated in the right-hand chart, where the green portion of the bars represents the improving half-year performance of Cathay Pacific and the subsidiaries. I believe this is beginning to demonstrate the results of our team's effort across the past three years to review our business and practices and to adapt our cost base. This is going to ensure that we emerge from the crisis in the best possible shape. With the improving trends, we're pleased to share that there were no further impairments required in 2022. This chart illustrates the major developments across the various parts of our business that have occurred in 2022. The highlight is certainly in the passenger revenue. The figures here include both premium travel and the low-cost travel businesses.
You will recall in 2021 that the cargo business enjoyed unprecedented market conditions with a complete imbalance between the supply and demand, which drove exceptional yields and load factors. In around the middle of 2022, this imbalance started to correct, and while cargo revenue was well down compared to 2021, this was still a very strong result for the business, if we consider it in a historical context. Fuel was our largest cost category in 2022, and I'll discuss that in more detail on a later slide. Finally, the ssociates result deteriorated compared to 2021, as I've already mentioned. Here we show the gearing position that I touched on on my first slide. This chart presents our adjusted net debt.
The so-called adjustment is that we have excluded operating leases, and we focus on this figure because this is the basis for our covenant calculation with some of our lenders. If we include operating leases, our total debt balance has also declined. The declining trend in net debt is encouraging and something that we will continue to be focused on. Touch wood, if the current positive trends continue, this may be the last time that we need to present this liquidity slide. As an airline, we face many external risks that are beyond our control and that, to varying degrees, are very difficult for us to manage. We consider the best way to protect the business against these risks is to always maintain a significant liquidity position.
Of course, this comes with a cost because the interest we earn on cash deposits is significantly lower than our overall cost of capital. Ultimately, we are not too apologetic about this cost because we think of this primarily as a very flexible insurance policy, and therefore, similarly, the cost of carry we think of more as an insurance premium. Over the course of the past three years, the immediate risks facing our business have been very significant, and there's been more uncertainties, not the least of which being how long the pandemic would continue. We therefore considered it prudent to maintain an even more elevated liquidity position than we would normally choose.
Looking further ahead, if our debt levels continue to reduce and the business recovery proves to be sustained, we will have to consider whether this remains the correct liquidity setting and decide when it might be appropriate to transition back towards more normal levels. I've already touched on our encouraging cash burn trend, particularly in the second half of 2022, so I won't add too much on this slide. Here I've provided an illustration of the significant elements of our cash flow, but in the interest of time, I'll probably just move on to the business performance highlights for various parts of our business. I'm sure most of you will be very familiar with this slide, as Rebecca has presented a similar one many times in the past.
What is new is that we are finally starting to see an uptick that commenced in May when travel restrictions started to progressively ease, and this uptick accelerated throughout the second half of the year. As I mentioned earlier, this has proven to be a significant turning point and marked the start of our journey to rebuild Cathay Pacific for Hong Kong. In the called out section of the chart, you will notice that at the end of 2022, Cathay Pacific Group was serving a larger portion of passengers traveling through Hong Kong than before the pandemic. This shows how Cathay is taking the lead in reconnecting Hong Kong with the world. In 2022, Cathay Pacific's passenger revenue was HKD 13.7 billion, a material improvement on 2021.
Capacity expressed as ASK grew by 52% with most of this in the second half of the year. Load factor increased from very low levels to 73.6%, which is certainly healthy, but a long way behind the historic levels we achieved before the pandemic. Nonetheless, the trends are very encouraging. Conversely, yield remained well elevated compared to historic levels at HKD 0.927, albeit softer than 2021 when passenger numbers were far lower. These charts break down the elements of the passenger revenue and are quite helpful in illustrating some of the trends I touched on, but in the interest of time, I'll leave this for you to review yourselves. From the cargo perspective, 2022 revenue declined to HKD 26.9 billion. While this was lower than 2021, we do consider this to be a strong result overall.
I think it will be helpful if I add some more color to the cargo trends on this slide. You'll notice in the middle chart that in 2021, we achieved exceptional load factors. There is usually an imbalance in trade flows between a flight's origin and destination. It's typically not possible to achieve the same high load factors that we can in the passenger business in our cargo operation. To achieve more than 80% load factor in 2021 was really exceptional and illustrates the total demand and supply imbalance that I mentioned earlier. Across 2022, we witnessed cargo load factors correct from these exceptional levels, but they remained healthy from a historic perspective. Looking at yield, which is illustrated in the bottom chart, this remained elevated across the whole of 2022.
For the year, we managed to, in fact, exceed the 2021 levels. In part, this was due to a very large spike in the first half of the year, which you can notice on the chart. When we were operating a slightly adjusted cargo network, we were flying much more regionally rather than long haul, to accommodate some of the impositions on our crew from the different border restrictions. Under this network, the overall yield increased, but it's not what we would call an optimized network, and the costs are far more efficient if we operate our freighters on this short route network. Overall, it's not really ideal to see the yield driving up from that perspective. By the second half of the year, we had returned to a more normal network.
The yield declined a little, as you can see. Overall, the result was stronger in the second half. Moving on to costs. Overall, you'll see there is a reduction across most cost categories. Our largest costs are fuel, which I'll cover in the next slide. Depreciation and rentals, which are largely fixed, although there was some improvement in 2022 because we returned some aircraft to lessors. Staff costs, which decreased as a result of lower headcount. Together, these represent more than 60% of our total operating expenses. Of course, for our business, managing all costs is important, and the other notable items are set out on the chart. I'm sure many of you will have noticed that our costs in terms of ATK have increased in 2022.
This lower cost efficiency is more a story around the lower capacity that was operated during the year, combined with the fixed and semi-variable nature of some of our costs, such as depreciation and rentals, which I mentioned earlier, more so than costs are naturally increasing. Moving on to fuel. Our fuel consumption in 2022 dropped by 11.3% compared to 2021, and this was similar to the 11% drop in ATK. Of course, jet fuel prices in 2022 were significantly higher than the year before, and you can see that in the left-hand chart. Unfortunately, this more than offset the reduction in fuel consumption, and our gross fuel costs, before we include the benefit of fuel hedging, were around 50% higher than the year before.
At Cathay, we do hedge fuel, and have consistently and strictly followed the same fuel hedging policy for many years now. This policy allows us to hedge up to two years in advance, based on our forecast fuel consumption, and would typically limit us to somewhere around or below 50%, hedged for that forecast fuel amount. I must emphasize that our policy does not allow any speculation on future fuel price movements, and we enter our hedging positions knowing that sometimes they will lose. In 2022, as fuel prices increased, our maturing hedge positions were ultimately profitable and provided some welcome protection against the increased fuel price volatility. We continue to enter into new fuel hedging positions throughout the year, and the chart to the right illustrates our hedging positions at the end of the year.
We're very aware of the increasing interest rate environment we now find ourselves in. Fortunately, through our combination of fixed rate borrowing, interest rate hedging, and the reduction in our net debt position, our net financing charges in 2022 maintained a broadly similar cost to 2021 at just underneath HKD 2 billion. Our borrowings remained approximately 52% hedged at the end of 2022, and I note that the ratio in our chart on the right-hand side is on a gross debt basis. If we consider this on a net debt basis and take into account our HKD 18.3 billion of liquid funds, which provide a natural hedge of sorts, the fixed interest rate ratio increases to around 68%. If I move on to HK Express. HK Express reported another loss in 2022, albeit an improvement compared to 2021.
The large percentage variance, as you can see in the table of operating statistics between 2021 and 2022, really reflect growth from a very low base, but the operation was severely constrained across much of the year. By the end of 2022, the situation for HK Express had started to improve, and it finished the year flying to 15 destinations. HK Express no longer has any aircraft parked outside Hong Kong, and the full fleet of 26 aircraft will be returned to active service by the end of the first quarter this year. As Ronald mentioned earlier, our lifestyle business is key to maximizing our ancillary revenue opportunities and in helping us to attract new customers and engage with all of our customers more frequently.
This support has been critical during the past three years, as many of our customers were unable to fly with us. Our lifestyle team have continued to develop a broad range of new and exciting services and offerings for our customers, a few of which are set out in this in this slide. Looking ahead, we do expect that the pickup in passenger travel will, in turn, support the lifestyle business, including particularly driving the attractiveness of Asia Miles as a currency for our customers. Turning to other subsidiaries. Air Hong Kong is a dedicated cargo airline that is largely focused on supporting its major customer, DHL. This business is a relatively consistent performer, and its contribution was similar to 2021.
The airline's services subsidiaries include Vogue Laundry, HAS, which is our ground handling business, Cathay Pacific Catering Services, and CPSL, our cargo terminal. These businesses suffered from low passenger numbers and restricted cargo capacity passing through Hong Kong Airport. The combined loss for these businesses in 2022 totaled HKD 1.1 billion, which was around 32% greater than 2021. Our associates refers to companies in which we have a significant but not controlling shareholding. Typically, Cathay will have board representation in these companies, which allows us some influence on their decision-making. Under the accounting rules, we're required to recognize our share of each associate's profit and loss in line with our ownership percentage.
For practical reasons, we recognize our major associates results three months in arrears, as there is often a time lag before we have visibility over their results. Therefore, our share of losses of associates included in the Cathay 2022 results reflects the associate's own result for the period from October 2021 to September 2022. This was a difficult period for our associates, and our share of their losses for 2022 was HKD 6.3 billion compared to a loss of HKD 1.7 billion in 2021. I should also draw attention to the more recent news relating to Air China, which completed an equity raising in January this year. As a result of this new share issuance, Cathay's shareholding in Air China has been diluted from 18.13% to 16.26%.
We anticipate there will be a gain on the deemed disposal of this 2% reduction in our shareholding as the share issuance price exceeded our December 31, 2021 book value of our investment. Given the 3-month time lag, it's too early to calculate this gain accurately at the moment. If I move to the outlook, as we enter 2023, we are growing increasingly confident in the prospects for the business across both the immediate and longer-term horizons. We expect to be operating 50% of pre-pandemic passenger capacity by the end of this month, 70% by the end of this year, and 100% by the end of 2024, which is a faster recovery than anticipated for the broader industry by IATA's economists.
We have the crew in place to support our current schedule, and staff attrition has fortunately returned to normal levels from the more elevated levels that we experienced in the past three years. In the cargo market, demand has continued to soften in the early part of 2023, and we are monitoring this closely. The recovery of our passenger flight capacity will support higher cargo capacity, which we anticipate to reach 85% by the end of the year. Together, this probably signals that the supply and demand imbalance that we've benefited from across the past two years will largely correct in 2023. We remain confident in our cargo business, which as Ronald mentioned, was recently named Cargo Airline of the Year by Air Transport World magazine.
In summary, while 2022 was no doubt a challenging year, we are very much encouraged by our progress across the last six months. We are pleased to now be at the stage where we are rebuilding a new Cathay Pacific, which Hong Kong can be proud of. At this point, I'll hand back to Andy and open the floor for questions.
Okay. Thank you, Chris and Ronald. Thank you for the presentations, and thank you for the videos. This is very nice.