Philippines-Middle East market: PAL woos Etihad, Cebu Pacific expands & Emirates seeks more rights

Competition in the Philippines-Middle East market continues to intensify as Cebu Pacific expands and Philippine Airlines (PAL) looks to enhance its partnership with Etihad. But Emirates could see its share of the market decline unless it succeeds at securing new traffic rights, an initiative its Philippine competitors seem eager to block.

Cebu Pacific recently launched services to three destinations in the Middle East, giving it a total of four destinations in the region. PAL also now serves four destinations in the Middle East, all of which were launched in 2H2013, and is upgrading Abu Dhabi to daily on 1-Dec-2014.

PAL could potentially add more capacity to Abu Dhabi under an enhanced partnership with Etihad which could see PAL use Etihad to provide offline access to continental Europe and parts of North America. Eithad rival Emirates however could be forced to reduce capacity as a consequence of its recently terminated codeshare with PAL.