(Reuters) – Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd reduced Wednesday its cash burn target to the following few months. The reduction was due to Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd’s belief that easing travel restrictions for crew members and quarantine rules would help increase passenger flight capacity.

Now, the airline expects that its cash burning will be less than HK$500m (or 63.70m) per month in the next few month. That is down from its prior forecast of HK$1billion-HK$1.5billion per monthly.

Hong Kong relaxed hotel quarantine on passenger flight crews and exempted freight crews from quarantine. It also lifted travel alert for overseas countries. This is a significant change to the strict restrictions that made Hong Kong one of the most remote places in the world.

Last month’s total passenger count was 40,823, an increase of 82% over the previous year. However, it is still down approximately 99% from its 2018 pre-pandemic peak. Although it had a 26% increase in cargo traffic for April compared to last year, this was only a slight decrease of 44% from 2019

Ronald Lam, Cathays’ Chief Customer Officer and Commercial Officer said that these changes in quarantine and other medical surveillance requirements would allow for additional destinations and flights to be activated.

Cathay announced that the airline will increase or resume passenger flight capacity to several destinations such as the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and India beginning in June. The company also added long-haul freighter destinations within Europe and the Americas.

($1 = 7.8498 Hong Kong dollars)