The Philippine unit of budget airline Air Asia said Tuesday passenger traffic grew 64 percent in the second quarter on the back of strong demand in the domestic market.
Air Asia Philippines said passengers it carried from April to June reached 1.63 million, higher than 994,527 passengers it served in the same period last year. Load factor was at 91 percent, down by 2 percentage points from 93 percent last year.
“Throughout the second quarter of 2023, the domestic performance was incredibly strong, and international market traffic remained buoyant with favorable load factor,” Air Asia said.
“In response to the robust international market demand, the group has reallocated more capacity to international routes to meet the strong resurgence from the international market,” it said.
Air Asia’s Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes earlier pledged to invest $1 billion for the expansion of its operations in the Philippines. “So, over the next few years, we think we will invest about US$1 billion into the Philippines. We have about 300 million so far. We wanna grow our aircraft from 23 to 50 including wide-body aircraft,” he said.
