Cebu Pacific Air (5J, Manila Ninoy Aquino International) will soon issue a request for proposal (RFP) for what it calls the largest narrowbody aircraft order to ever come out of the Philippines, according to CEO Mike Szucs who briefed media on the sidelines of the 2023 Aviation Summit in Manila last week.
"This is an extremely large order for Cebu Pacific certainly, but even in the Philippines it's by far the largest order I think that will ever be placed," he said. "In the coming week or two, we will formally launch the request for proposal and may the best man win. It will be one or the other; we're not going to split it between two. It could be that we order a whole load of new Airbuses again, or it could be we order a whole load of Boeings. We would think three to six months would be the whole (RFP) process."
The low-cost carrier presently operates an all-Airbus fleet comprising twenty-one A320-200s, fourteen A320-200Ns, seven A321-200s, eleven A321-200NXs, three A330-300s, and five A330-900Ns. The airline also has a further 44 aircraft on order at Airbus. Despite this, Szucs said Boeing was firmly in the running because of the Pratt & Whitney engine issues currently impacting many Airbus aircraft. Buying Boeings could help the carrier diversify risk - "so we haven't got all our eggs in one basket."
"Frankly, we will look at the right outcome financially and operationally, but both products are really good. The B737 MAX is an excellent product [...] The A320 is an excellent product as well. That's why we're ambivalent in that sense. It will be the right financial answer so that we can pass on the best ticket prices for our paying passengers," he said.
In September, Cebu Pacific said that it expected a number of its A320neo and A321neo aircraft to go out-of-service for engine inspections after RTX, the parent company of Pratt & Whitney, recently announced a recall of PW1100G engines manufactured between 2015 and 2020. "We expect that this will affect our fleet availability in 2024," the airline said in a September 15 Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) filing that flagged a lower-than-anticipated fleet growth next year.
Cebu Pacific flies to 53 destinations in 15 countries. At the weekend, it resumed flights to Cotabato following a closure of the airport to commercial jet aircraft due to the state of the runway. The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines has now allowed flights to resume after repairs were made including asphalt overlay and repainting of markings.
