Eastar Jet CEO Update

Transcript

Kim Jung Shik:Eastar Jet, we're a Korean low-cost carrier. We were established in 2007, but we've been flying for about 7 and a half years now, and we're probably— we're actually the only real independent low-cost carrier in Korea because we have no corporate You know, we're— 2016, we expect to fly 5.5 million passengers, and we currently have 16 planes in operation. Well, T'way is also another low-cost carrier in Korea, and it's very simple. What we want to do is we want to offer our customers a wider network, but probably more importantly, we want to offer our customers a much more convenient schedule option, and that's why we're codesharing with T'way. And just as a little bit of background, we've actually been codesharing with T'way on one route for the past 3 years now, since 2013, on our Gimpo-Seongsan, which is an airport in Taipei. We've been codesharing with T'way very successfully on that route. So this is not something new to us, which is probably why it was much more easier to, I guess, to do this codeshare. Well, the China market is actually probably Korea's largest growth market right now as far as we're concerned. In the past, we've seen a lot of— most of our— actually, the China market for us is inbound Chinese tourists coming to Korea. And in the past, we've seen maybe 95% of that be through group travel and through travel agencies. We're seeing a little bit more of a trend toward FITs, toward the individual travelers, but still not as much. But that's probably maybe the trend that's going to, I guess, continue. This year in 2016, We actually are planning to add 4 new aircraft. We ended 2015 with 13 737s, and we've already added 3 more this year. Next month we're going to have another one, so we're going to end 2016 with 17 737s. And so we're going to see a significant boost in In terms of available passenger seats, I think close to 40% increase in passenger seats. And I think going forth, we'll probably not keep on running at this rate, but we expect to add maybe 2 or 3 planes a year from 2017, 2018 and on.

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