SEEKING to alleviate congestion at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the Philippine Department of Transport and Communications (DOTC) is taking steps to tone down domestic operations at the country’s main international gateway.

Firstly, DOTC has ruled that no additional domestic services are to be mounted during NAIA’s peak operating period, which stretches from 07:00 – 16:00 daily.

Nina Fernandez, a sales & operations officer with Friendship Tours & Resorts, an inbound operator dedicated to the Japanese market, said: “Reducing flights in the morning is okay, but (reducing flights) in the afternoon might create complications for our clients with connecting flights. Otherwise, Japanese flights arrive between 14:00 and 17:00 at NAIA, so reducing flights (to ease congestion) won’t benefit us.”

Philippine transportation secretary Mar Roxas is also pondering the redeployment of existing connecting services – from NAIA to domestic destinations such as Batanes, El Nido and Amanpulo – to an airstrip in Sangley Point, Cavite, about 30km away. Civil aviation authorities are currently sorting out guidelines for the move.

SEAir COO, Patrick Tan, told TTG Asia e-Daily that the airline’s Manila-Basco (Batanes) and Manila-Busuanga (Coron, Palawan) flights, which are operated using Dornier 328 aircraft, were unlikely to be affected by the proposed changes.

Instead, services likely to be bumped off from NAIA to an alternative airport were “non-standard, non-scheduled” charter flights, he explained.

SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) has decided to pull the plug on services to Abu Dhabi and Athens. The last flights to both destinations will depart Singapore on October 26, 2012.

SIA said in a statement that the suspensions were due to sustained weak performance on both routes, and were in line with policy to match capacity to prevailing market demand.

Customers holding confirmed bookings for travel to and from Abu Dhabi and Athens after October 26, 2012 (October 27 for the return Abu Dhabi-Singapore service) will be eligible for refunds, without administrative fees or penalties. This also applies to KrisFlyer redemption bookings.

In addition, affected customers will be offered alternative travel arrangements.

Meanwhile, SIA will continue to serve Dubai in the UAE, while connections to Athens are available on Star Alliance partner airlines via several of SIA’s other destinations in Europe.

SIA’s Athens service, active since 1972, is currently operated twice weekly, rising to three times per week between early July and late September. The carrier’s Abu Dhabi service, active since 2006, is operated thrice weekly.

EXOTISSIMO Travel has assumed full product management responsibility in Thailand for Adventure World, a major travel wholesaler based in Australia and New Zealand.

This follows the termination of Adventure World’s wholesale agreement with Thai Airways International’s Royal Orchid Holidays last month.

With immediate effect, all Thailand-associated bookings from Adventure World will be handled by Exotissimo Travel Thailand. This includes all ground operations and tours, hotel bookings and logistics.

Exotissimo Thailand general manager, Michael Lynden-Bell, said: “Thailand has become a mature, mainstream destination for Australian travellers, and Adventure World is one of the (market’s) major wholesalers dealing with travellers to Thailand.”

“We will be working closely with preferred hotel partners to ensure that Adventure World can continue to expand their business here,” he added.

CONSTRUCTION on Bintan Resorts International Airport kicked off yesterday, with the official groundbreaking ceremony taking place in Busung, Kuala Lobam.

Scheduled to open in mid-2015, the US$79 million facility is being funded by Gallant Venture, the parent company of Bintan Resorts International.

Chin Chow Yoon, executive chairman, Bintan Resorts International, said: “With greater accessibility to the resort destination, this airport project will serve to enhance the value of the many investments already made (in Bintan), and to attract more investments in new resorts, holiday homes, F&B, retail and attractions, especially at the newly master planned Lagoi Bay Development.”

Featuring one terminal and a 2.5-km runway in the beginning, Bintan Resorts International Airport will accommodate aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and Airbus 320, which have an operational radius of about five hours. This would place much of ASEAN as well as southern China and South India within reach.

The airport will serve mainly domestic routes, chartered flights from regional cities, as well as private planes. The next phase of development will see the airport expanded to handle aircraft with an operational radius of seven hours or more.

Bintan Island is currently served by Raja Haji Fisabilillah International Airport, which is located in Tanjung Pinang, the capital city of the Riau Islands. At the moment, the bulk of visitors to Bintan arrive from Singapore via a 45-min ferry connection.

Visitor arrivals to Bintan Resorts reached a new high of 470,470 in 2011. This figure is expected to climb to over one million visitors by 2015.

ROYAL Caribbean International’s Legend of the Seas made its inaugural call at Yeosu, South Korea yesterday. The visit coincides with the opening week of World Expo 2012 in the city.

Kelvin Tan, Royal Caribbean’s regional director Asia Pacific, said: “Legend of the Seas’ call at Yeosu is the highlight of this cruise. We have been specially planning for this for over a year – for our ship to arrive at the Expo right in the middle of the festivities.”

Currently en route an eight-night sailing from Yokohama to Jeju and Shanghai, Legend of the Seas’ ongoing North Asian season also features several six- to 10-night cruises to South Korea, Japan and China, with the trips originating from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tianjin and Yokohama.

Yeosu is the newest South Korean destination for Royal Caribbean International, after Seoul, Busan and Jeju.

Located in the heart of the Expo site, Yeosu’s brand new cruise facilities are expected to give the destination an edge in courting international cruise operators such as Royal Caribbean.

SINGAPORE is transforming into a hotbed for mobile transactions, but travel companies have so far been slow on the uptake of technology to penetrate this fast-emerging market, according to PayPal.

Rahul Shinghal, director, mobile, PayPal Asia Pacific said: “Travel merchants really stand to lose out if they don’t adopt mobile commerce (m-commerce). We’ve seen consumers making sizeable purchases on travel sites that have not even been optimised for mobile purchases. The demand is certainly there, but (travel) suppliers have been relatively slow to react.”

According to a joint study by Nielsen and PayPal, m-commerce expenditure among Singaporeans is forecast to grow tenfold to US$2.5 billion by 2015, as Internet-enabled mobile devices become more prevalent in their day-to-day lives.

The study also revealed that 11 per cent of smartphone users were willing to purchase airline tickets via mobile apps, with another six per cent open to buying travel packages. Comparatively, the proportion of tablet users willing to make airline bookings with mobile apps was higher (15 per cent), while for travel packages it was nine per cent.

Elias Ghanem, Paypal’s managing director for South-east Asia & India, said: “We will be marketing aggressively to the travel trade, and are optimistic about our chances in gaining more business from this sector.”

Dickson Seow, director, corporate communications, PayPal Asia Pacific said even though OTAs and hotels acknowledged the importance of gearing up for m-commerce, some were only just beginning to optimise their mobile presence and source for appropriate payment solutions.

Seow added: “Airlines remain averse to adopting mobile technology, as they are less certain about how it can be utilised to capture impulse spend, and what is needed to set it up successfully.”

AIR India’s (AI) curtailing of international services to stem operational losses has seen airfares from India to Europe and the US rise by about 20 per cent during the current peak travel season.

Since identifying that 80-90 per cent of its losses originate from international operations, the flag carrier has halted several routes to Europe and North America, including Amritsar-Delhi-Toronto and Delhi-London (Heathrow).

In all, AI intends to scale back its 34 daily connections to Europe and North America to 14 flights per day.

Exacerbated by the ongoing pilots’ strike, this cutback in international connections has seen airfares to Europe and the US rise by about 20 per cent. For example, Mumbai-London now costs Rs55,000 (US$1,008) for a two-way journey, up from Rs44,000 previously.

Anil Punjabi, chairman-east, Travel Agents Federation of India, said: “The demand for international travel is growing, so an airline making losses has only itself to blame. If AI cannot redeem itself, it should sell off its stake to other investors who can turn the airline around.”

“AI has low credibility and most passengers wouldn’t want to fly them even if they offer lower fares,” he added.