Cathay Cargo Brand Guidelines: Brushwing Freighters, Renamed in 2023

A freight arm with a Hong Kong home.

Cathay Cargo is the air-freight business of Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong airline founded on 24 September 1946. English Wikipedia’s history of the airline says freight came early: the founders’ first commercial flight carried Australian goods, and in July 1976 Cathay Pacific began flying a Boeing 707 freighter from Hong Kong to Seoul, Bangkok and Singapore. The company’s own site recalls its first aircraft, Betsy, a converted DC-3 with which the founders began operating in Hong Kong in 1946.

The cargo business took a name of its own in 1982, when, Wikipedia says, Cathay Pacific introduced Cathay Pacific Cargo. Its first long-haul freighter service ran twice a week from Hong Kong to Frankfurt and London, operated jointly with Lufthansa. In June 1994 Cathay Pacific bought 75% of Air Hong Kong, an all-cargo airline founded in November 1986 that began charter flights in 1988, and took the remaining quarter in February 2002; after a period in which DHL held 40%, Cathay bought that stake back, a deal Wikipedia records as completed at the end of 2018. STAT Times reported in November 2026 that Air Hong Kong is wholly owned by Cathay and that its freighters fly as part of the Cathay Cargo network.

The paperwork changed too. On 4 January 2011, according to Wikipedia, Cathay Pacific Cargo became the first airline operating from Hong Kong to switch fully to the electronic air waybill, under a pilot run by the International Air Transport Association in nine countries and territories.

From Cathay Pacific Cargo to Cathay Cargo.

The present name arrived in 2023. Marketing-Interactive reported on 13 July 2023 that Cathay Pacific had renamed its cargo business from Cathay Pacific Cargo to Cathay Cargo and launched a brand platform called “We Know How”. The magazine said the change lined up with the airline’s wider brand redesign under its “Move Beyond” ambition, and that the campaign was aimed at freight forwarders and direct shippers.

The campaign’s visual idea came from the aircraft itself. According to the same report, it was inspired by the circular cross-section of the freighter’s cargo cabin, used as a metaphor for a “world of possibilities” inside each shipment. A film travelled through a Cathay Cargo plane past temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals, fresh produce, race-car parts and champion horses, and interactive screens appeared in Hong Kong’s MTR stations; the campaign ran until October 2023.

The name moved onto the aircraft in the same period. Wikipedia says that on 18 June 2023 Cathay updated its freighter livery, replacing the “Cathay Pacific Cargo” titles with larger “Cathay Cargo” lettering, first shown on a Boeing 747-8F. The tail carries the airline’s Brushwing, a calligraphic stroke against a green field meant to suggest a bird’s wing, which Wikipedia dates to the early 1990s and which has been refreshed since. Before it, from June 1971 until November 1994, Cathay Pacific aircraft wore a livery of Brunswick green and white over bare metal that Wikipedia says was nicknamed the “lettuce leaf sandwich”, and some cargo aircraft, notably the Boeing 747-200Fs, flew in bare metal rather than all-white paint. On 1 November 2015 the airline revealed a simpler version of the scheme with the Brushwing on an all-green tail; the second aircraft to receive it was a 747-400ERF freighter.

Service names follow one pattern. The company’s site groups its specialist products under the Cathay name: Cathay Pharma for temperature-sensitive shipments, Cathay Dangerous Goods, which it says accepts all nine classes, Cathay Live Animal and Cathay Courier for urgent small shipments. The company says Cathay Cargo was the first airline in Asia to gain IATA’s CEIV Live Animals accreditation, and that it has won the ATW Cargo Operator of the Year award four times since 2023.

How cargo airlines present themselves.

Cargo airlines address a particular audience: freight forwarders, shippers and airport partners. Much of their identity travels on the aircraft itself. A freighter carries the livery of its parent airline or of its own cargo brand, and the fleet photographs that airlines publish on their websites and in press releases are among the most visible images of the business. In this group, the guides describe those liveries only as dated sources describe them.

Maps and schedules do a large share of the work. Cargo airlines publish network maps, hub information and seasonal timetables, because customers plan around routings and capacity as much as destinations. Nippon Cargo Airlines, for example, posts its summer and winter timetables and its road feeder schedules on its website, while Qatar Airways Cargo announces new freighter routings with their stops and weekly capacity in tonnes.

Product names carry much of the rest. Special cargo is sold under short names that the airlines set out on their own pages and in press releases, covering services for pharmaceuticals, perishables, live animals, couriers and high-value goods, each described in the terms the airline chooses. Qatar Airways Cargo, for instance, names products such as Pharma, Fresh and TechLift. The guides quote these names as the airlines give them and do not compare one service with another.

The working end of a cargo brand is digital. Shipment tracking by air waybill number, online booking portals, fuel surcharge notices and schedule downloads are where customers meet the identity day to day. The guides in this group set out what dated sources say about each airline’s history, ownership, fleet and network, and treat the palettes and typefaces shown here as unofficial interpretations rather than official brand assets.

Twenty 747s and the A350F to come.

The fleet is all Boeing 747 for now. A Cathay statement published by Payload Asia on 28 May 2026 gave it as 20 Boeing 747 freighters: 14 747-8Fs and six 747-400ERFs. The same release said Cathay Cargo had used purchase rights for two more Airbus A350F freighters, adding to six ordered in 2023 for a total of eight. Speaking to STAT Times in November 2026, the airline’s cargo director said the first A350F was expected in the second half of 2028, that 18 purchase rights remained, that replacements for the 747-400ERFs, then 17 to 18 years old, would be considered later, and that about half of Cathay’s cargo travels in the bellies of passenger aircraft. An Airbus A330 converted freighter, leased from ATSG, was due to join Air Hong Kong’s fleet in late 2026.

The hub is the brand’s backdrop. The May 2026 release cited Airports Council International as ranking Hong Kong International Airport the world’s busiest cargo airport 15 times since 2010, and Accenture Cargo data placing the Cathay Group among the five largest cargo airline groups by cross-boundary capacity. Belly space, it said, reaches more than 100 destinations through the group’s passenger network.

For a design guide, Cathay Cargo shows how a parent airline’s mark can carry a freight brand: the 2023 freighter livery swapped its titles for larger “Cathay Cargo” lettering while the Brushwing stayed on the tail. Compare the passenger side at Cathay Pacific and a Gulf freight division at Emirates SkyCargo. For this guide we use deep jade, ink, mist and a muted brass with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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