MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos no longer have to scramble over limited seats when booking a flight to South Korea as the government is raising air travel capacity between Manila and Incheon.
The Department of Transportation (DOTr) yesterday announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with South Korea to improve travel relations with the Philippines.
The DOTr sat on a two-day consultation with South Korea last week with the target of adjusting the capacity entitlements between Manila and Seoul.
In 2017, the Philippines and South Korea inked an MOU capping the number of weekly seats that airlines can offer when connecting Manila and Incheon. Back then, the cap was set at 20,000 per week, unchanged for seven years now.
This time, the cap was raised to 30,000 a week for airlines linking Manila and Incheon. Further, the two governments agreed to retain their initial decision to impose no limits on weekly seats from Manila to other parts of South Korea.
Citing data from the Department of Tourism, the DOTr said the Philippines is starting to recover its usual levels of inbound visitors from South Korea.
South Korea used to be the largest tourism source of the Philippines prior to the pandemic, besting traditional markets including China, Japan and the US.
As of May, the Philippines has welcomed a total of 682,362 travelers from South Korea, hinting that tourism activities between Manila and Seoul are rebounding.
The DOTr said increasing the weekly seats between Manila and Seoul will speed up the recovery of travel and tourism in both countries. Apart from this, pushing up the capacity limits would benefit airlines that look to scale up their flight volumes for the route.
Also, the Philippines had proposed amendments to its air transport agreement with South Korea in light of changes to the Public Service Act. Seoul, for its part, had asked Manila to permit third country code sharing arrangements.