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Cebu Pacific orders 7 A321ceo to mitigate potential A321neo delays
June 9th 2017
The Philippines’ largest carrier, Cebu Pacific Air, this week placed an order for seven additional A321ceo aircraft to join its fleet from March 2018. Read More » At the same time, the budget carrier is deferring first delivery of its 32 on-order A321neo to the fourth quarter of 2018.
Cebu Pacific decided to defer the A321neo deliveries due to delays with the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines selected to power the aircraft.
"We have decided to take a conservative approach to the introduction of the A321neo into our operations. We remain confident that Pratt & Whitney will address all issues on the GTF. There is, however, the need to increase our current capacity to meet growing domestic and regional network demand, thus the A321ceo order," said Cebu Pacific CFO, Andrew Huang.
The A321ceo was supposed to join the airline’s fleet in September, but unresolved issues with the GTFs have prompted several delays.
Cebu Pacific now expects to take delivery of all 32 A321neo from November 2018 through to 2022.
"We are very excited about adding the A321 to our fleet," said Lance Gokongwei, President and CEO of Cebu Pacific. "The aircraft will enable us to increase capacity on popular routes, while at the same time benefiting from the lowest operating costs in this size category. This will mean more low fares for more customers flying across our domestic and regional network."
CEB recently took delivery of two new aircraft: an Airbus A330-300 and an ATR 72-600, bringing its current fleet to 61.
It will roster the new A330s on routes from its Manila hub to Hong Kong, Cebu and Davao, replacing A320s. This will result in 59% additional capacity per flight.
The carrier has recently run into trouble with its long-haul operations. Last month, it announced the suspension of its four-weekly Manila-Kuwait A330-300 route from June 13, while the carrier’s thrice-weekly Manila-Doha and Manila-Riyadh A330 routes will be axed from July 1 and July 2, respectively.
This leaves CEB with a nearly non-existent long-haul network. Going forward, the only remaining long-haul destinations in the budget carrier’s network will be Sydney and Dubai.
"The entry of Cebu Pacific into these markets benefitted passengers with lower fares and more choices. Of late, other carriers have aggressively added more flights, which has resulted in substantial oversupply of seats and fares that are so low, hence making the routes unsustainable," Atty JR Mantaring, vice-president for corporate affairs at CEB, commented.
“We have to continuously review our routes to ensure their viability. At this point, it makes more sense for us to re-deploy the aircraft used for our Riyadh, Doha and Kuwait service to routes where we can further stimulate demand and sustain our low fare offers,” Mantaring said.
