80 Years Together

Customers pay for weight and volume in air cargo, so anything that saves either is welcome. A piece in Cargo Clan magazine extolled the virtues of new-to-market bubble wrap. “Any product is better and more economically protected by air,” said the piece. It also proved that using bubble wrap over “voluminous” crumpled paper saved more than 18 per cent in volume.

At the height of Hong Kong’s garment boom, air-freighted suits were carried in cardboard boxes with hangers, which didn’t hold many nor offer great protection, but added volume and cost. Cathay Pacific, clothing brand D’urban, and forwarder Air Express International put their heads together and came up with a cheap solution that added a bar and hanging hooks to a standard plastic “igloo” pallet cover that enabled up to 1,000 garments to be hung. The bar could be removed for the return flight to carry different cargo. 

Pharma shipments by air have always been dependent on some form of temperature control, tricky during ramp transfers. Cathay Pacific Cargo developed the thermal dolly, a movable refrigerated storage device to transfer shipments between aircraft and the terminal. Today, they can be hired for temperature-sensitive shipments when booking. 

Cathay Pacific became the proud owner of “Asia’s most complex and powerful computer” to process everything from reservations to flight planning. The HK$28m IBM 3081 computer was the most powerful installed in Hong Kong since 1970 and required a minimum of 185sqm of air-conditioned space to house its water-cooled brain, which could handle 10 million instructions a second. 

There has long been a desire to put booking into agents’ hands. When CUBIC was debuted in 1983 (see above) the plan was to expand beyond Cathay’s 250 in-house terminals and let agents take control, including those outside Hong Kong. In 1984, CUBIC was in place in Japan (above) and by the end of 1986, more than 30 agents in Hong Kong had their own terminal enabling them to book and print their own air waybills. 

The modern idea of opening bookings to customers across platforms began with TRAXON in the early 1990s. It grew out of the Global Logistics System (now a technology partner of Cathay Cargo), which was then an airline-led booking platform. TRAXON addressed agents’ desire for “information through a single source, unbiased schedules and access to rates”. By 1995, more than 1,600 agents at more than 3,600 locations were online and could get a response for a booking enquiry in seven seconds.

The introduction of Cathay Pacific’s Boeing 747 passenger services to Europe, most of which were overnight, unearthed the opportunity to become a wholesale express courier with a scheduled overnight service for other courier firms. Cathay secured the services of Linehaul Express (Linex) as general sales agent, an arrangement that remains in place, underpinning the Cathay Courier solution. 

In 1996, the first browsers and commercial websites were appearing, fuelling a demand for computers, microprocessors and the machines that print them: steppers. These machines are bulky, but highly sensitive with dedicated shipment protocols including temperature, stability and timing. They remain a stalwart of the Cathay Expert  solution today and a regular feature of shipments supporting the AI boom.

It was estimated that temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals market was worth US$130bn in 2008, so to protect these valuable shipments, Cathay Cargo introduced Pharma LIFT (now Cathay Pharma), which also offered priority handling, multiple checkpoints throughout the journey and greater shipment transparency. By 2010, Cathay Pacific Cargo was the only carrier to offer online temperature tracking for all active container pharma shipments.

In the early days of the Hong Kong business, cargo customers would have either gone to HQ at 1 Connaught Road (pictured) – or perhaps popped into the ticket office at the Peninsula Hotel. It might have been hard to track down the airline’s founders by phone: as they were busy flying the company’s DC3s around Asia.  

The 70s were powered by the pioneering COSAC air cargo computer system, run on a room-sized IBM 370 mainframe computer. A decade later we moved bookings to the CUBIC system, which saw teams swap typewriters and teleprinters for TV screens. Today, the DNA of that system remains in Cathay Cargo’s Cargo Spot operations platform. 

2021 saw the launch of Click & Ship, Cathay Cargo’s intuitive booking platform – and now, 80 per cent of bookings are made online. 

Available at all hours, Click & Ship allows customers to make shipment bookings – and new in 2026, directly modify them in a few simple steps using the new Manage Booking functionality.

In the early days of Cathay Pacific Airways, loading cargo on the airline’s DC3s was very basic: weight and balance calculations depended on the pilots’ knowledge and experience.

Occasionally, in the event of a technical issue or very bad weather, it was necessary for the flight crew to jettison cargo in flight.

Previously cargo loading theory was taught by demonstrating on cardboard model. In 2025 the Cathay Academy and Cathay Cargo combined to create the VR CAVE (Virtual Reality Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), which enables teams to learn how to strap down shipments a virtual environment – without occupying valuable aircraft downtime.

Cathay Cargo introduced HeavyPro in 2025: a digital form that takes approvals for out-of-gauge shipments from nine hours to three, 24/7. 

The solution also calculates the strapping positions, which is sent to ramp staff’s Cargo Connect app, launched in 2023, enabling them to secure the shipment – paper-free.

Cathay Cargo took a giant leap into cyberspace by launching its first website in 1996 – two years before the arrival of Google. Simple navigation buttons allowed users to check routes, schedules and to rudimentary TRAXON tracking. The Cargo Clan newsletter urged “those who have seen the future” to bookmark the page.

In 2015, as smartphones with bigger screens became standard, Cathay Cargo released its proprietary Cargo App. The app put limited but up-to-the-minute information at customers’ fingertips, as well as flight schedules, services and contact info. 

As browsing and phone habits have changed, we’ve changed with the times.  

cathaycargo.com is fully responsive for screens of all kinds, whether you’re checking a shipment in the office or booking a new on the go with your mobile. With our fully integrated Manage Booking feature, and you have a platform that’s fit for the age.