CEB Announces MEL

11 December 2017


Low cost carrier Cebu Pacific has announced that it will fly from Manila to Melbourne by the middle of 2018.

Cebu Pacific has increased flight frequency between Manila and Sydney from five times weekly to daily operations beginning Dec. 1, 2017 to Jan. 31, 2018.

Due to utilization of flight entitlements by the airline it has run short of the required seats to make the route to Melbourne viable.

Cebu Pacific vice president of corporate communications JR Mantaring said the airline has already requested the Philippine air panel to hold air talks with the government of Australia for additional seats as these was provided in the 2015 air bilaterals.

The Philippine air panel and its counterpart in Australia raised seat entitlements between the two countries to 9,300 seats from 6,300 seats per week in 2015.

Manataring said the airline requested for 872 seats between Manila and Melbourne equivalent to thrice a week schedule on the A330-300 which the airline intends to use.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting development as CEB originally shelve this plan. But I guest they changed their minds. I'm curious can MEL both support PAL and CEB ?

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    1. deferred should be the appropriate word. According to Bitre that should hurt Singaporean and Malaysian Airlines more as it eats up market share. At present, there are only 356 pax on average heading to MEL daily. About 140 of that is being carried by PAL.

      In contrast, there are more than 1,110 pax to SYD daily. About 65% of that traffic are made through connections. Perhaps because of the cheaper fare

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  2. I think a good number of the pax who are connecting and not traveling with PAL are doing so for reasons other than price. I think CEB/PAL will struggle with 330s and PAL will have a significant advantage once it deploys the A321neo, especially if it increases frequency to MEL.

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  3. The main concern is that, will CebPac's A330 have enough range to do MEL-MNL or MNL-MEL during the peak seasons @ 436 pax plus passenger baggage and cargo like balikbayan boxes?

    It is more likely that the plane will be subjected to payload restrictions just like what happened to their Middle East route December last year.

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