Cebu airport targets 12% hike in passenger arrivals this year

By Louella Desiderio (The Philippine Star)
Updated February 14, 2017 – 12:00am
http://www.philstar.com/business/2017/02/14/1671907/cebu-airport-targets-12-hike-passenger-arrivals-year

In a statement yesterday, GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corp. (GMCAC) said the MCIA is targeting to hit 10 million passenger arrivals this year, up from the 8.9 million passengers handled last year.

Of the total passengers handled last year, 6.7 million were domestic passengers and 2.2 million were accounted for by international tourists.

Last year’s volume of passengers rose 12 percent from the 7.98 million handled in 2015.

“By pursuing new and diverse routes and increasing travel and tourism to the Visayas-Mindanao regions, we are ensuring long term sustainability and economic and social benefits for the passengers and the businesses,” GMCAC president Louie Ferrer said.

To support the goal of achieving higher passenger volume, international and domestic airlines are being offered incentives to launch new routes from the MCIA.

“We are proud and excited to be at the helm of this growth. With a total of 16 international destinations, 27 domestic destinations and with 19 partner airline carriers, it shows that Cebu is no longer just a secondary airport. It is a viable choice connecting to the rest of the Philippines and to the world,” Ferrer said.

Last year, new international and domestic destinations were launched out of MCIA.

The new international routes launched last year include Cebu-Los Angeles of Philippine Airlines (PAL), Cebu-Xiamen of Xiamen Air, Cebu-Dubai of Emirates, Cebu-Chengdu of China Eastern Airlines and PAL, Cebu-Hangzhou of Air Asia, Cebu-Wuhan of China Eastern Airlines, and Cebu-Daegu of T’Way Air.

New domestic routes made available last year were Cebu to Ormoc, Calbayog and Roxas by Cebu Pacific.

Within the current quarter, PAL will open five new domestic routes (Clark, Puerto Princesa, General Santos, Surigao and Coron) out of Cebu to promote greater connectivity.

New routes connecting Cebu to Australia, Europe and other Southeast Asian countries are in the works.

Expanding links to China, Japan and South Korea from Cebu are likewise being studied.

With more international and domestic destinations set to be launched, there is a need to increase MCIA’s capacity.

“We need proper infrastructure so that we can accommodate more airlines and more flights. Route development is essential to an airport; the more flights we have, the more passengers will pass through our gates,” Ferrer said.

Construction of a new world-class Passenger Terminal Building or Terminal 2 of the MCIA is ongoing to prepare the gateway for growth in passenger traffic.

Terminal 2, which is expected to open by June of next year, will increase MCIA’s passenger capacity to 12.5 million.

GMCAC bagged the MCIA project under the public-private partnership program. It assumed operations of the MCIA in November 2014.