Cebu Pacific plans flights to Honolulu

CEBU Pacific Air, the country’s biggest budget airline, is finally arriving in the United States and could mount flights to Honolulu by early 2016 once its bags the necessary permits, according to its top official.

The move, which would place it in direct competition with legacy carriers like Philippine Airlines, marks a new long-haul destination after Australia and the Middle East.

“We are looking at early next year [for Honolulu],” Cebu Pacific CEO Lance Gokongwei told reporters at the sidelines of the Philippine Aviation Summit last Friday.

He said Cebu Pacific might also increase flights to Australia, where it currently flies to Sydney, and the Middle East, where it flies to Doha, Riyadh, Dubai and Kuwait.

Flying to Honolulu would make business sense given the large number of Filipinos residing there, Gokongwei said.

Cebu Pacific is also looking at traffic coming from the United States’ West Coast, which it is unable to reach given the range limitations of its current fleet.

Cebu Pacific mainly uses its six Airbus A330s for long-haul routes and Gokongwei said that the carrier was studying the acquisition of more planes for extended flights.

He noted that Manila was also in a good position to lure traffic within Asia seeking to fly to Honolulu.

“Using Manila as a hub, probably a lot of North Asian countries can have more direct flights to Honolulu,” Gokongwei said.

The carrier has been strengthening its position in the region, home to some of the world’s biggest budget airlines, including Malaysia’s AirAsia Berhad of tycoon Tony Fernandes.

Last week, Cebu Pacific bagged the approval of Singapore’s government to enter into a strategic alliance with Tigerair, a unit of Singapore Airlines Ltd.

Cebu Pacific said the agreement would provide greater connectivity to travellers, given their overlapping networks. For example, Tigerair’s customers will be able to select from Cebu Pacific’s extensive network in the Philippines and North Asia while Cebu Pacific can tap its partner’s Southeast Asia and India network.

The alliance is also expected to boost the passenger volume of Cebu Pacific, which last year fully acquired Tigerair’s Philippine unit and renamed it Cebgo.

Gokongwei said that Cebu Pacific and Cebgo, which dominate the domestic market, were on track to hit about 18 million passengers for 2015, a figure 6.5 percent more than that in 2014.

Cebu Pacific, a unit of Gokongwei-led conglomerate JG Summit Holdings Inc., has a fleet of 55 aircraft. Between this year and 2021, Cebu Pacific will take delivery of seven brand-new Airbus A320, 30 Airbus A321neo, and 16 ATR 72-600 planes.