MANILA, Philippines — AirAsia Group Bhd reported continued growth of its Philippine operations last year, with the carrier enjoying stronger passenger demand in the fourth quarter.
AirAsia Philippines has 2.25 million passengers in the October to December period, up 21 percent from the 1.86 million passengers carried during the fourth quarter of 2018.
For the entire year, passengers carried by AirAsia Philippines rose by 25 percent to 8.55 million from the previous year’s 6.87 million.
“AirAsia Philippines also posted a robust capacity growth during the (fourth) quarter, up 27 percent year-on-year following the introduction of a new route, Manila-Bacolod in addition to frequency increases across popular domestic and international routes such as Cagayan de Oro-Manila, Manila-Caticlan and Bangkok-Manila,” the AirAsia Group said.
Load factor, however, dropped by four percentage points to 85 percent in the fourth quarter due to the large increase in capacity.
For the whole of 2019, AirAsia Philippines’ load factor saw a three percentage points growth year-on-year to 88 percent, while capacity increased 25 percent to 9.72 million.
Overall, the AirAsia Group said it successfully achieved its target load factor of 85 percent in 2019 for its six AOCs composed of Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, India and Japan.
The AirAsia Group is the largest low-cost carrier in Asia, servicing the most extensive network of over 135 destinations across all ASEAN countries, Asia, India, Australia, China, Middle East and Hawaii in US.
In the Philippines, AirAsia operates a fleet of 24 aircraft on more than 500 weekly domestic and international flights from its hibs in Manila, Clark, Cebu, and Kalibo