MCIA to Regain Pre-Covid Passenger Traffic

The Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) is set to regain its pre-Covid passenger traffic in two years.

“The impact is really big. Prior to COVID, we had 12.6 million in passenger traffic last year. Starting February this year onwards, traffic drastically went down,” said Atty. Steve Dicidican, General Manager of MCIA, during the Mugstoria Ta aired on the FB page of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas and hosted by Assistant Secretary Jonji Gonzales.

For June 2020, MCIA recorded only 26,018 passenger traffic. It was definitely a huge drop compared to June 2019 where they recorded more than 1 million passenger traffic.

MCIA also recorded only 2.4 million passenger traffic from January 2020 to June 2020 compared last year where it reached 6.3 million passenger traffic.

MCIA also revealed that before the pandemic, they accommodate 1,900 commercial flights weekly and 31,000 passengers daily.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only four foreign airline companies have resumed their operations at the airport.

The said airline companies are Qatar Airways (Doha-Cebu-Doha), Jeju Air (Incheon-Cebu-Incheon), Silk Air (Singapore-Cebu-Singapore and Jin Air (Incheon-Cebu-Incheon). Air Asia, Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines also have limited flights.

“Our income has drastically dropped. But that does not mean that we stop our capital spending. It’s a chicken and egg. If you don’t do capital spending, you won’t grow. And we have to anticipate for growth ‘cause we know that tourism can quickly get back once restrictions are lifted and once anxiety is gone,” Dicdican pointed out.

“We will continue with our projects. We’re slowly catching up to full blast the construction of the second runway. We hope to finish it before the end of this administration probably early 2022,” he added. (MLC)