CEB targets passenger, aircraft traffic growth

Cebu Pacific is looking at increasing both its passenger and aircraft traffic in Mactan Cebu International Airport as it banks on the potential robust growth in the country’s second biggest air hub with the new Terminal 2 and soonto-be renovated Terminal 1.

In a press briefing yesterday, vice president for marketing Candice Iyog said Cebu will remain the company’s largest hub outside Manila.

"Aside from the new Terminal 2, we are also looking forward to the renovation of Terminal 1. With that we can grow more traffic out of Cebu," she said.

T1 now solely caters to domestic operations while T2 caters international flights.

Iyog noted the Gokongwei-led airline is expecting the delivery of new aircraft, which would allow it to mount new flights in the future particularly from Cebu.

She said North Asia, which includes Korea, Japan and China, remains a priority for the firm’s Cebu international route expansion.

Currently the airline flies directly from Cebu to Singapore, Hong Kong, Incheon (South Korea) and Narita (Japan).

She said the company is keen on tapping the Chinese market in the future as other carriers have opened direct flights from Cebu to various Chinese cities amid the increasing Chinese tourists in Cebu.

The budget carrier also flies to 23 domestic destinations from Cebu.

Cebu hub accounts for a third of the airline's total flights.

On an average, the carrier has a 385 weekly flights from Cebu flies over 74,000 passengers weekly.

The year the airline targets to fly 22 million passengers, up from 19.4 million flown last year.

Cebu Pacific's aircraft fleet is currently at 67. MCIA's new terminal building has a capacity of about 13 million passengers annually.

GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corp, the consortium between Philippine firm Megawide Construction and Indiabased GMR Infrastructure Ltd, won in 2014 the 25-year public private partnership (PPP) contract to build, operate and maintain the new MCIA terminal for some P17.52 billion.

Last June 2017, the consortium submitted a P208-billion unsolicited proposal for MCIA's 50-year development.

To date, MCIA is serving 33 domestic and 23 international destinations, with 26 partner airline companies. —

Carlo S. Lorenciana