MANILA, Philippines – Zest Air received delivery of its 10th Airbus (A-320) this month hiking their fleet to a total of 10 airbuses and 3 MA-60s. The airline is acquiring two more A-320s within the year.
Alfredo Yao, president and CEO of Zest Airways, Inc., said that increased business and the potential for more growth is the reason they are building up their fleet.
Yao said they’ve had a good start this year citing January 2012 figures doubling their loads on both domestic and international passenger air traffic compared with the same period last year.
“Our total passengers for our domestic flights this January is 224,723 compared to 150,091 in January last year, while for our international flights we had 35,638 passengers versus 15,990,” said Yao, a former special envoy to China for tourism and cooperation.
Zest Air’s seat allocation also increased to 300,560 from 215,488 for domestic and to 44,340 from 17,352 for international compared to the same period last year.
“We expect passenger traffic this summer season to be good as in previous years. This is the time of the year when most people travel to tourist destinations for their vacations. There will be a downtrend during the rainy months of June to October but traffic will pick up once again during the latter part of October,” said Yao.
Airline executives attribute Zest Air’s increase in business primarily to the vision and direction of Yao.
Butch Rodriguez, SVP-commercial and external affairs group, also cited an increasing demand for air travel and customer service as contributing factors.
“More and more Filipinos are discovering the convenience of air travel for their business and leisure travel at affordable prices. The way we provide service to our passengers is another reason for our substantial increase in patronage from air travelers,” Rodriguez said.
The veteran airline executive also announced that they will be launching scheduled flights to Incheon, Korea and Shanghai, China from Manila this coming June 2012 and also direct flights from Manila to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in October.
Zest Air is also launching Clark-HK, Clark-Bangkok and Clark-Singapore flights during the last quarter of 2012.