Cebu Pacific Says It Is Second Biggest

The Manila Times

Monday, September 21, 1998

CEBU Pacific Air has firmed up its rank as the second biggest local airline and now even leads on some routes in passengers and market share, the company said in a statement.

Diego Garrido, Cebu Air Senior Vice President, said the two-year old airline made its mark by pioneering in low fares and posting the best on-time performance.

"We have made flying affordable to more people by passing on to them our lower costs of operations" Garrido said. "We have created our own market base and even attracted a good number of flyers from other airlines as well."

Citing data from the Manila Domestic Airport and the Civil Aeronautics Board for August, Cebu Pacific said the Philippines' four commercial airlines flew 331,656 passengers on eight major routes in the Visayas and Mindanao. The total capacity stood at 463,171 seats.

"Cebu Pacific accounted for one-third of the passengers (114,991), a 31-percent jump from August 1997 although its seat capacity rose by only 27 percent," the airline said.

It said Philippine Airlines flew 160, 997 passengers on a capacity of 210,392 seats. PAL had a market share of 48.5 percent and Cebu Pacific 35 percent.

On the premier Manila-Cebu route, 117,531 passengers flew in August of which almost 33,000 took Cebu Pacific which deployed 41,100 seats, Cebu Pacific said. This represented a plane load factor of 79 percent.

"PAL flew twice as many passengers (66,479) and deployed even more seats (95,598) for a load factor of 70 percent," Cebu Pacific said.

Garrido said Cebu Pacific operated at optimum efficiency because it had just the right number of employees and used only one type of aircraft, leading to lower operating and maintenance costs.