PH eyes new air rights deal with South Korea

The Philippines is set to hold air talks with South Korea in November in line with broader efforts to bolster tourism and trade, a government official said Friday.

Jesus Ibay Jr., Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) chief for economic planning and research, said in a text message that the air talks were aimed at updating the existing agreement.

The talks are anticipated as Korea remains the biggest market in terms of tourists visiting the Philippines, data from the Department of Tourism (DOT) showed.

The DOT said that as of July 2015, there were 762,277 Koreans who visited, or about 24.52 percent of all inbound traffic. This was also 15 percent higher than the same period in 2014. Korea is followed by the United States, Japan, China and Australia, the same data showed.

Ibay said there were no other scheduled air talks so far for the rest of 2015.

Recently, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates concluded a round of air talks.

In these talks, the Philippines agreed to increase the maximum number of flights per week for each country from the current 28 flights to 35 flights. This came despite opposition from domestic carriers.

CAB executive director Carmelo Arcilla said the agency granted the added capacity with conditions.

He said the UAE carriers operating additional flights to Manila were “bound to also operate separately to Clark or Cebu within one year from signing of the agreement.”

“This condition is in line with our open skies policy in our developmental gateways outside Manila, and forces UAE airlines to invest in our developmental gateways,” Arcilla said.