Airlines buck proposed flight transfer to Clark

MANILA, Philippines — Gokongwei-led Cebu Pacific wants lawmakers to leave it to airlines to decide where they fly in response to a lawmaker’s proposal to transfer half of the Manila flights to Clark International Airport in Pampanga by 2025.

As easy as it may sound, Cebu Pacific president and chief commercial officer Xander Lao said it will be challenging to shift 50 percent of flights in and out of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) to the Clark airport.

As it stands, Cebu Pacific has yet to even restart its international network at the Clark airport, as it focuses on restoring its routes to and from its Manila hub first.

“At the end of the day, we welcome any capacity growth that comes into the market. However, it should be the airlines who would choose where the markets are going to be,” Lao said.

“We will be happy to grow back into Clark and a lot of the other [airports] that we used to fly to. We have achieved 100 percent in capacity restoration, but that’s mostly on seats. From a base perspective, we are not there yet. Hopefully, we are able to add some of the Clark flights soon,” he added.

Lao said one of the reasons it would be inappropriate to transfer half of NAIA flights to Clark is its distance to most of the destinations in Metro Manila, Southern Tagalog and the Bicol region.

“We think that Clark as an option for Manila is quite far, it’s 120 kilometers away from the central business district (of Metro Manila),” Lao said.

“Also, can you imagine going an hour and a half to Clark to go down in Legazpi for an hour and a half flight?” the Cebu Pacific chief asked.

Before the pandemic, the budget airline offered direct flights from Clark to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore as proof of the viability of the gateway. However, Lao said Cebu Pacific has yet to restore any of those routes right now, although the goal is to reinstate them one after the other this year.

Last week, House Minority Leader Marcelito Libanan proposed that half of all flights to and from NAIA be redirected to the Clark airport by 2025. Through this, Libanan said the government can prevent a repeat of the New Year’s Day fiasco at NAIA that delayed around 300 flights and affected at least 56,000 passengers.