Cebu Pacific eyes flights to Middle East by 2013
Budget carrier Cebu Pacific is looking at flights to the Middle East, home to hundreds of thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), for its first foray outside the Asia-Pacific region.
The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) said the Gokongwei-led airline has applied for authority to mount flights to Saudi Arabia, in line with the company’s plans to launch long-haul flights by late next year.
“Cebu Pacific has an application for Saudi,” said lawyer Elben Moro, head of the CAB’s hearing examiners division.
He said the company also has pending applications for flights to Guam and the nearby Pacific island nation of Palau. Hearings for the Guam and Palau applications were set for last week, but were suspended due to scheduling conflicts, Moro said.
Last week, Cebu Pacific announced plans to lease eight long-haul aircraft to support the company’s expansion outside the Asia-Pacific region. Cebu Pacific president and CEO Lance Gokongwei said the company would consider flights to the Middle East, Europe, North America and Oceania.
Gokongwei said the company wanted to serve the largely untapped markets where millions of Filipinos live and work.
CAB Executive Director Carmelo Arcilla said the Middle Eastern region was one of the places in the world with a heavy concentration of OFWs.
He said there were very few cases in the world’s aviation industry where low-cost carriers have succeeded in mounting long-haul flights, making Cebu Pacific’s own foray a crucial opportunity to reinvent its own image.
“That low-cost long-haul model, that’s unchartered territory for local airlines and to some extent, for the global industry,” Arcilla said.
“Air Asia X has been doing it but they are being very cautious in their expansion,” Arcilla said, referring to the long-haul affiliate of Malaysian budget carrier Air Asia Berhad. He also cited the case of now-defunct Oasis Hong Kong Ltd., which failed to make its low-cost long-haul flights profitable before eventually being forced to close down.
