Tuesday, June 11, 2024 This weekend, Cathay Pacific celebrates a significant milestone in Canada and its own history as a leading Asian airline in North America: the 30th anniversary of flight CX828, a Boeing 747-400, landing in Toronto for the first time on June 9, 1994, via Anchorage. This event marked the commencement of the one-stop service between Hong Kong and Toronto Pearson International Airport, 11 years after the airline launched its nonstop Vancouver-Hong Kong services, which observed their 40th anniversary in 2023. Initially, the Toronto-Hong Kong route operated thrice weekly in each direction, with a refueling stop in Anchorage.
At the time, it was the fastest and most direct route between the two cities, taking 16.5 hours eastbound and 18.5 hours westbound.
In November of the same year, leveraging favorable westerly winds, Cathay Pacific briefly offered a nonstop service on this route, reducing travel time to just 13 hours and 45 minutes. This flight also marked the first commercial trans-polar crossing by an Airbus aircraft from Toronto. Cathay Senior Vice-President, Americas, Chris van den Hooven, said: “In the 1980s and 1990s, the Boeing 747 enabled Cathay Pacific to expand its international presence throughout the world, and indeed, in Canada.
Prior to Cathay Pacific’s one-stop service from Hong Kong to Toronto, passengers would have had to change aircraft at least once. The ‘Queen of the Skies’ put Cathay Pacific on the map and helped propel us into.
