Nov 14 (Reuters) - Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, the world's largest air cargo carrier, said on Monday its October cargo throughput fell 17.5 percent on the year, the seventh consecutive drop, due to continued weak demand from Hong Kong and China.

Cathay and its unit Dragonair carried 135,998 tonnes of cargo and mail in October, it said in a statement.

"The airfreight industry remained weak overall in October, with our key Hong Kong and China markets continuing to be soft," Cathay's General Manager Cargo Sales & Marketing James Woodrow said in the statement.

"It looks unlikely that we will see the usual year-end peak," he added.

The cargo and mail load factor was down by 8.9 percentage points to 66.2 percent, the statement said.

For the year to end-October, tonnage had dropped by 7.7 percent while capacity was up by 8.1 percent.

It said the two airlines carried a total of 2.38 million passengers last month, up 3.8 percent on the same month last year. But the passenger load factor fell by 3.1 percentage points to 80.1 percent.

For the first 10 months, the number of passengers carried increased by 2.3 percent compared with a capacity hike of 9.3 percent, it added. (Reporting by Alison Leung; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)