People planning to travel by plane in September must prepare for higher fares following the hike in fuel surcharge approved by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB).

In an advisory, CAB said it is raising the fuel surcharge that airlines can collect from their passengers to Level 6 next month, from Level 4 this month.

Under Level 6, travelers must pay a fuel surcharge of P185 to P665 for domestic trips and P610.37 to P4,538.4 for international flights.

For three months since June, CAB has retained the fuel surcharge at Level 4, allowing airlines to keep airfares at their most affordable this year.

Under this, operators can collect P117 to P342 for local trips and P385.7 to P2,876.82 for foreign flights.

As a protocol, CAB asked airlines aiming to collect the new fuel surcharge to file an application in or before September. Also, the agency said the applicable conversion rate for September is pegged at $1 to 54.97.

Airlines may apply the fuel surcharge in the ticket prices of customers to mitigate losses resulting from price fluctuations in jet fuel.

For the year, domestic carriers, particularly Philippine Airlines (PAL) and Cebu Pacific, hope to hit, if not surpass, their pre-pandemic numbers with the resurgence of demand for air travel.

PAL is aiming to fly a total of 14.5 million passengers, while Cebu Pacific is shooting to exceed its pre-pandemic high of 22.48 million guests in 2019.

Also, passenger traffic in the Philippines has shown signs of returning to normalcy soon. For one, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) has grown its passenger footprint by 78 percent to 22.22 million as of June, from 12.49 million a year ago.

When compared, this is just 190,000 short of the 22.41 million travelers the airport received in the first half of 2019. The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) believes that NAIA is headed in the right direction in terms of recovery, especially as the overseas market is picking up pace with the lifting of border restrictions.

MIAA officer in charge Bryan Co said Filipinos are growing eager to travel to complete the trips they had to cancel at the height of the pandemic.

'The double-digit surge in NAIA's flight movement and passenger volume is enough ground for optimism that the aviation industry is steadily heading toward full recovery,' Co said.

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