Cebu Pacific Air (CEB), the country’s leading flag carrier with the youngest fleet, categorically stated that flying to Europe or U.S. is not a priority as it would rather focus on serving the still underserved domestic routes and international destinations within the 4-5 hour flight range.
“It’s not a priority, and we don’t need to rush,” said Alexander Lao, CEB President and Chief Commercial Officer, said during a media roundtable with editors when asked if they would consider flying to Europe.
Lao said the Israelis actually came to them to ask if they would like to fly to Tel Aviv. Many people also asked if they wanted to fly to Los Angeles and San Francisco, U.S. while some of its shareholders had asked them before to fly into the West Coast.
“Having said that, we do see that there’s so much opportunity still here in the Philippines. The travel penetration is still very low here. We still have a large addressable market within a four-hour flight range,” he said.
While CEB still has so much to do here in the Philippines, they already fly to longer flight destinations such as Dubai, Melbourne and Sydney. But, Lao noted those are very few and far between.
As of the first half this year, the largest domestic and international airline in the Philippines generated total revenue of PHP63.3 billion, 23 percent increase from PHP51.4 billion in the same period last year. Net income went up 153 percent to PHP9 billion from PHP3.5 billion same period last year with 14 million passengers, 21 percent more than the first half last year, and 99 aircraft with average fleet age of 6 years.
“Our business model is such that it works more in these four to five-hour short sectors, we’d rather focus on that,” he said.
So, to make a long story short, CEB will continue to focus on these four-hour flights and they are not even in a rush. Long-haul flights, such as Europe or U.S. are not a priority.
