Cathay Pacific admitted on Wednesday that it had underestimated the number of pilots it needed in reserve to maintain its normal operations, leading to recent flight cancellations.

In a statement, the airline's chief operations and service delivery officer, Alex McGowan, regretted having to cancel flights at short notice, and acknowledged that it was failing to live up to the standard expected by customers.

“I would like to extend a sincere apology to our customers affected by recent travel disruptions. Over the Christmas and New Year period, we underestimated the number of reserve pilots we would need,” he said.

“Given our January pilot rosters were already set in mid-December, the lack of adequate reserve levels persisted into January. In order to stabilise the current operation, we needed to cancel further flights across the first two weeks of January.”

The airline said it has contacted affected passengers to offer alternative travel arrangements, usually within 24 hours of their original departure time.

Cathay said it has also cancelled additional flights on non-peak days until the end of February to ensure that all customers booked to fly during the peak Lunar New Year period between February 7 and 18 can travel as planned.

On average, 12 flights are cancelled each day. The peak was on January 7 when 27 flights were cancelled.

The airline assures that the number of cancellations will decrease in the coming weeks.

McGowan said he would lead a task force to identify and address the underlying issues to improve the airline's services.