Budget airline posts 9% rise in passenger base

Cebu Pacific Air, the country’s biggest budget airline, said it flew 18.4 million passengers last year, above internal expectations.

The carrier, a unit of Gokongwei-led JG Summit Holdings, said the figure was 9 percent higher than the 16.9 million passengers flown in 2014.

Cebu Pacific CEO Lance Gokongwei earlier said that its 2015 passenger volume would hit about 18 million.

Cebu Pacific said in a statement that its passenger volume was “driven by the airline’s low-cost long-haul services, and increased frequencies in key domestic markets.” It also cited gains for international destinations such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Nagoya in Japan, and Beijing and Shanghai in China.

The carrier said passenger load stood at about 83 percent last year.

Passengers flown on Cebu Pacific’s long-haul routes grew by 146 percent year-on-year, on the back of increased presence in Australia and the Middle East, it said in the statement.

The carrier served more than 150,000 passengers between Manila and Sydney in 2015.

In the meantime, passenger growth on flights to and from the Middle East were driven by sustained capacity between Manila and Riyadh, Kuwait and Dubai, and the launch of Manila-Doha in June 2015.

Cebu Pacific said flights between Manila and Dubai posted the highest number of passengers, with more than 230,000 flown in 2015.

Passengers flown to short haul international destinations such as Hong Kong, Japan and China also went up.

Passenger volume to and from Japan grew by 39 percent to more than 280,000 in 2015 as it “successfully stimulated traffic with the launch of its operations from Manila and Cebu to Tokyo (Narita), and Manila to Nagoya.”

Cebu Pacific also mounted flights between Manila and Fukuoka, its fourth destination in Japan, in December last year.

In the Philippines, domestic passengers rose by 7.41 percent in 2015, following added frequencies between Manila and Tagbilaran (Bohol), and Cebu and Tandag (Surigao del Sur). Both routes posted over double passenger growth year-on-year.

At present, the carrier has a network of more than 90 routes on 64 destinations, spanning Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. It has a fleet of 57 planes, composed of eight Airbus A319, 35 Airbus A320, six Airbus A330, and eight ATR 72-500 aircraft.