Philippines low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific resumes flights to Singapore

SINGAPORE : Philippine low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific resumed flights to Singapore on Friday, three years after suspending the service due to the SARS health scare, the airport operator said.

The Cebu Pacific flight arrived after midnight at the Singapore Budget Terminal, joining Singapore-based Tiger Airways as the no-frills facility’s second tenant and the first foreign carrier to operate from it.

Cebu Pacific, controlled by the family of Filipino tycoon John Gokongwei, will operate a daily flight between Manila and Singapore. The budget terminal here opened in March.

The carrier suspended the loss-making route to Singapore in 2003 barely three months after its launch as demand for travel was slashed due to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak.

Cebu Pacific flies to 16 destinations in the Philippines and has only two other international points, Hong Kong and Seoul.

“We are very happy to welcome Cebu Pacific as the second carrier to operate out of Singapore’s budget terminal,” said Ho Beng Huat, deputy director general of civil aviation at the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.

“The terminal’s operating model of ‘no frills’ efficiency and low cost operations will serve very well Cebu Pacific’s ‘low fare, great value’ business model.”

Ho said the service is expected to further boost passenger traffic between the Philippines and Singapore which rose 24 percent year-on-year in the seven months to July.

Tiger Airways, backed by Singapore Airlines, flies to the Philippines through Clark Field, a former US air force base north of Manila.

Singapore’s one-storey low cost terminal at Changi Airport occupies 25,000 square metres (278,000 square feet) of floor space, about the size of three football fields, and can handle about 2.7 million passengers a year.

It is designed to serve five million after expansion. - AFP /dt