Cebu Pacific (CEB), apart from being the No. 1 domestic carrier, now leads local airlines in serving ASEAN, offering 92 direct weekly flights on the most number of ASEAN routes and destinations from the Philippines.
“Our ASEAN service has topped the industry without counting help from other airlines through code shares, and we expect to grow both domestic and international services further this year and beyond as we take delivery of more aircraft,” said Cebu Pacific president and CEO Lance Y. Gokongwei.
He said the JG Summit airline business unit offers a total of 92 direct weekly flights on nine routes to six ASEAN destinations, namely, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), and Hanoi. The competition has only 78 weekly flights to three non-stop cities on three routes to the Philippines.
Outside ASEAN, Cebu Pacific also flies to Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Seoul, Pusan, and will add several more destinations this year.
“The past twelve months has been a terrific growth period for us as we expanded into Asia not only from Manila but from our Cebu and Davao hubs as well. Its quite noteworthy that the top seven growth areas for tourist arrivals in 2007 are areas where Cebu Pacific started or expanded operations over the past year and we believe this is because of our trademark low fares,” he said.
Based on a recent UBS Investment Research report (Jan-Sep, 2007), domestic air travel passenger growth for the Philippines grew by 23%, growing even faster than China which registered a 16% growth rate.
“As the leading domestic carrier in the Philippines, we are very proud of this because we know that we are able to effectively bring air travel closer to more Filipinos. This has always been our vision as an airline and we intend to continue with our expansion in order to bring our low fares to more people,” he added.
Cebu Pacific is to take delivery of four Airbus A320 and six ATR 72-500 brand new aircraft this year for further service expansion of its domestic and international network. It now has ten A319s and five A320s. The first of six turbo-prop ATRs will be delivered in February to serve short runways like Caticlan (Boracay), among others.
