Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority’s (MCIAA) team is highlighting its location as an ideal gateway to the southern and central regions of the Philippines
“Around 90% of all tourist destinations are just a one-hour flight from Cebu,” said Julius Neri Jnr, CEO of MCIAA, speaking to ARGS at Routes Asia.
The airport serves the province of Cebu in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines. It is aiming to become the preferred tourist gateway to the country with its tagline, ‘Welcome to the friendliest gateway to your destination’. The Cebu Metropolitan Area is the third largest in the country after Metro Manila and Metro Davao.
In Langkawi, MCIAA was meeting with airlines that already serve congested Manila. “We are trying to entice them here,” said Neri. “It is difficult to get slots at Manila, so we are offering Cebu as an alternative. We have the capacity.”
The airport’s terminal can handle 18 million passengers, and a long-awaited second runway at the airport is set to be operational by year-end.
MCIAA is luring traffic back to its terminals at pace, hitting 10.5 million passengers in 2023 and hoping to reach 12.5 million this year. This will be comparable to its peak traffic mark of 12.8 million travellers in 2019.
On the domestic traffic front MCIAA is at over 90% of 2019’s passenger levels, whereas international recovery is lagging at around 70%, said Neri. “The absence of Chinese carriers is the main factor,” he noted.
Pre-pandemic, China was Cebu’s second-largest inbound market after Korea, but with strict travel restrictions in place Chinese traffic has declined to virtually nothing. The MCIAA team is hoping that Chinese travellers will be able to obtain visas for the Philippines more easily this year, as has already happened in other countries.
While the return in force of Chinese airlines will be a major boost for MCIAA, the airport’s marketing team is pushing Cebu hard in other regions. For example, there is the potential for up to five
Japanese cities to be connected to Cebu. Today, the only Japanese route to Cebu is from Tokyo Narita.
The lack of ground service support in Japan is a serious restricting factor when it comes to Cebu’s gaining more Japanese flights.
Another factor limiting growth at MCIAA is the issue of aircraft unavailability that home base carrier Cebu Air (which operates as Cebu Pacific) is facing. Speaking on a panel at Routes Asia, Rohan Kapoor, Group Director Operations Contracts and Asset Management at Cebu Air, was frank about the growth pause forced on the airline by the grounding of Pratt & Whitney GTF powered Airbus A320s.
Unserved markets in terms of direct flights from Cebu include India and Australia, and both have the potential to be successful, said Neri. For Indian travellers wishing to visit the Philippines, there are once again visa issues that will have to be overcome first.
Mactan-Cebu International is the second-largest airport in the Philippines. It is operated by a Filipino-led private consortium between Aboitiz InfraCapital (AIC), GMR Group of India, and Megawide Construction Corporation (MCC), under a concession agreement with the Philippine Government.
