Cebu Air passenger traffic up as of Sept.

Cebu Air Inc., the country’s biggest budget airline operator,  said passenger traffic was up in the  first nine months of the year, despite a dip last September.

Cebu Air, operator of Cebu Pacific  Air and Cebgo, said it carried 14.48 million passengers from January to September this year, up from 13.65 million in the same period last year.

Capacity growth during the period was also up 0.4 percent. This meant seat load factor, a measure of flight utilization, was higher at 86.1 percent compared to 81.5 percent the previous year.

The gains game even as Cebu Pacific said September passenger traffic was down 2.8 percent to 1.4 million compared to the same period in 2015.

Capacity also declined 2.4 percent while seat load factor shrank to 80.9 percent, from 81.3 percent.

Cebu Air, a subsidiary of the Gokongwei family’s JG Summit Holdings Inc., earlier said it was targeting to carry 20 million passengers this year.

Growth from passenger demand, coupled with lower fuel prices, a major expense in the airline business, have propped up profits of Cebu Pacific in the first six months of 2016.

Cebu Pacific disclosed that net income in the first semester this year hit P7.7  billion, up by almost half compared to the same period last year. Revenues jumped 12.2 percent to P33 billion.