MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines should pursue open skies, specifically with Japan, the Asean, Middle East and Europe but with reciprocity, Cebu Pacific CEO Lance Y. Gokongwei declared Tuesday. But "Let us have Open Skies for all, not Open Skies for foreign airlines and Closed Skies for Filipino carriers."
Earlier, CEB has been concerned over the lack of reciprocity under EO 29 which declared an Open Skies policy for all our airports, except Manila. Reciprocity based on equal opportunity is extremely important not just to Cebu Pacific but also to the public in general," he stressed.
Already, Japan had signed open skies agreements this year with Sin-gapore, Malaysia, and South Korea and with the US late last year. It took their respective governments an average of just more than a month to finalize these agreements. Japan is open to more such agreements with ASEAN and this presents an opportunity the Philippines must grab quickly.
Despite efforts to have an ASEAN Open Skies regime, the Philippines and Indonesia remain as holdouts. "If we sign this, the region will be open to each country's carriers on an equal footing. This is a regional effort which I think will work better than a unilateral approach."
"We also support reciprocal Open Skies agreements with regions like the Middle East and Europe where Philippine carriers don't fly to today provided of course we can, if and when we are ready."
Definitely, CEB has no issues with two key aspects introduced in EO 29: increased competition and unlimited access to Philippine skies by foreign carriers. The objective of the EO was to bring in more tourists, the premise being: if foreign carriers are allowed to compete and freely fly to the Philippines the tourists would come.
However, "We would like to be part of this competition. If foreign carriers are given unlimited access on routes to and from the Philippines, we believe it is only fair, that CEB and other local airlines be given unlimited access to and from the Philipines to these carriers' home countries, on an equal opportunity of access; on a level playing field. We should be allowed to compete with these foreign carriers on those same routes, and offer our trademark low fares not only to their nationals/tourists but to our own OFWs as well who live or work there. This is reciprocity and is most fair.
"Reciprocity will keep all airlines on their toes and allow Filipino carriers like CEB to compete with foreign carriers. Ultimately, more competition leads to lower fares, benefiting not only CEB but the whole tourism industry, here and abroad," Gokongwei pointed out.
Cebu Pacific's low fares played a major role in spurring growth in tourism as shown by 127% growth in domestic tourism in the last five years.
