Philippine airlines reduce flights to China amid weak demand

Philippine Airlines plans to reduce services to Beijing and Guangzhou in the coming months, becoming the latest Filipino carrier to reduce flights to China amid weak travel demand, Bloomberg reported.

Cebu Pacific Air and AirAsia Philippines have also reduced their routes to China in recent months.

Cebu Pacific has decided to cancel its planned resumption of Manila-Beijing flights in 2024 and will scale back services to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Xiamen by the end of this year due to low demand, according to The Straits Times.

AirAsia Philippines suspended all its flights from Manila to China by the end of August.

The airline's head of communications and public affairs, Steve Dailisan, explained that the suspension was aimed at "optimizing the fleet and prioritizing other routes with stronger load factors."

Prior to the Covid pandemic, AirAsia operated flights to seven Chinese cities from Manila in 2019. By mid-2024, this had dropped to two cities, and by the end of August, all flights had been suspended.

Before the pandemic, China was the second largest source of tourists to the Philippines, with over 1.7 million Chinese visitors in 2019. However, Chinese arrivals have remained at around 20% of pre-pandemic levels, with only 263,000 Chinese tourists visiting the Philippines in 2023.

The first half of this year saw just 199,000 arrivals from China.