Cebu Pacific is aggressively pursuing expanded air traffic rights through bilateral negotiations to support its aggressive growth plans.
“We’ve made our wish list. Every year, we do that at the start of the year,” Cebu Pacific president and chief commercial officer Xander Lao said.
“South Korea was one of them. We’re fortunate, the Philippine government got that through,” Lao said.
The Philippines and South Korea signed a new agreement on July 4, 2024, expanding the 20,000 weekly seats each from Manila to points in Korea and vice versa, to 30,000 weekly seat capacity exclusively for the Manila-Incheon route.
South Korea used to be the largest tourism source of the country before the pandemic. Data from the Department of Tourism (DOT) showed that Korean visitors to the Philippines reached 682,362 as of May 2024.
Lao also said that the Philippines and Hong Kong agreed to increase flight entitlements that allows Cebu Pacific to add more frequencies into Hong Kong.
“Part of our wish list, by the way, was India because we did think that the bilateral air talks between India and the Philippines are still limited today. So, even though we can’t reach it today with our aircraft, it’s really planning for the future,” Lao said.
“The other one where we said that there is a need to increase bilateral is Australia. Currently, the flight entitlements are fully allocated to Australia amongst the Philippine carriers,” Lao said.
Cebu Pacific flies to Melbourne and Sydney.
Cebu Pacific operates a route network serving 62 domestic routes and 32 international routes with a total of 2,983 scheduled weekly flights as of June 30, 2024,
Cebu Pacific announced on July 2 that it signed a binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Airbus for the purchase of up to 152 A321neo aircraft for $24 billion (P1.4 trillion) based on list prices, the largest aircraft order in Philippine aviation history.
The airline has a fleet of 87 aircraft as of June 30, 2024. The fleet excludes three ATR 72-500 aircraft classified as other assets as these are currently not operating and are held for sale. The average aircraft age of the airline’s fleet is about 5.5 years as of June 30, 2024.
Cebu Pacific posted a net income of P3.54 billion from January to June 2024, down from P3.74 billion in the same period last year.
Revenues amounted to P51.439 billion, up by 18.1 percent from P43.55 billion it earned in the same period last year.
