Flights to Beijing start by CEB

Philippines Cebu Pacific on Sunday mounted its first flights to Beijing, China, making the budget carrier the second Philippine company to serve the route.In a statement, the Gokongwei led company said it began its Manila Beijing service on September 5, with the maiden flight taking off from Manila at 7:35 p.m. and arriving in Beijing at 12:05 a.m.The inaugural flight’s load factor, or the number of passengers on a flight relative to the number of seats available, was at 70 percent, the company said.

It’s a promising number, the airline said, especially with last month’s hostage taking in Manila, which left eight Hong Kong tourists dead, still fresh in the public’s memory.When Cebu Pacific had its inaugural flight to Brunei last month, seats were sold out.Cebu Pacific offers the lowest fare alternative from the Philippines to Beijing, so we are very optimistic about our Beijing operations. This is our third destination in China, after Guangzhou and Shanghai, and we can see that the market for Cebu Pacific flights can really be stimulated by our trademark low fares, the company’s vice-president for marketing and distribution Candice Iyog said.We are grateful for the support of the different government offices which have helped promote our flights to and from Beijing, and we hope to serve even more passengers through our thrice weekly flights to the Philippines, she said.

Beijing is Cebu Pacific’s 16th international destination in its network, and third international destination in China. The airline currently operates Manila to Beijing flights every Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday, and Beijing-Manila flights every Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.One-way tickets start at P4,999. Cebu Pacific also flies to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau.The company also flight to Hong Kong and Macau every day. In a separate statement, the company said it had slashed fares to the two Chinese cities to boost traffic.
The past few weeks, we have seen a slight softening in our forward bookings for Hong Kong and mainland China, and we hope to stimulate travel further with this seat sale, Iyog said.

Asia’s third-largest low-cost carrier, Cebu Pacific flies to 33 destinations in the Philippines, offering the most extensive network in the country. This includes Boracay Caticlan, Puerto Princesa, Cebu, Laoag, Clark, Bohol and Coron.From Manila, passengers can also proceed to other international destinations such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Osaka, Seoul Incheon and Singapore.