More Than 2 Million Passengers Pass Through Mactan Airport in Q1 of 2017

A total of 2.43 million domestic and international passengers passed through the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) in Lapu-Lapu City in the first quarter of this year, the airport’s private operator said.

In a statement on Thursday, GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corp. (GMCAC) said this number was 18 percent higher than the 2.07 million passengers recorded in the same period last year.

Of this number 1.6 million are domestic passengers, posting a six percent increase over the 1.51 million in the same period last year, while 831,867 are international passengers, 48 percent increase from 561,557 in the same period last year.

GMCAC, a consortium of Philippine conglomerate Megawide and Bangalore, India-based GMR Infrastructure Ltd., took over operations of the MCIA in November 2014.

The consortium won the bid for the PHP17.5-billion Mactan airport expansion project, which involves rehabilitation of the existing terminal and the construction of Mactan airport Terminal 2 (T2) which would increase the airport’s capacity to 12.5 million passengers.

Mactan airport T2 is set to be completed by June 2018.

The existing terminal, which was built in 1995, had a capacity of 4.5 million passengers a year which was breached in 2010 when more than 5 million passengers passed through the airport.

Some 8.9 million passengers passed through the Mactan Airport in 2016, of which 6.7 million were domestic passengers and 2.2 million were international passengers.

GMCAC said they expect some 10 million passengers to pass through the airport this year. (EB/PNA)