South Korea’s top budget carrier Jeju Air will temporarily expand flights to popular Southeast Asian locations to make up for the loss in Japanese demand on expectations that the anti-Japan movement could stretch out into the fall season.

Jeju Air announced on Wednesday that it will increase the number of four Southeast routes departing from Incheon and start new services from Daegu to Cebu in the Philippines in September.

The airline will expand the current seven weekly flights on the Incheon-Kota Kinabalu route and the Incheon-Macau route to 11 times a week each, effective on Sept. 1 and Sept. 9, respectively. The service expansion will last until Oct. 26 It will also add weekly flights on the Incheon-Kaohsiung route (from four weekly flights to five) from Sept. 1 to Oct. 20 and on the Incheon-Chiang Mai route (from five weekly flights to seven) from Sept. 11 to 29.

The new Daegu-Cebu route will go into service on Sept. 17 with four weekly flights. The airline will depart at Daegu International Airport at 8:05 pm and arrive at Cebu at 11:15 pm, while departing at 00:15 am from Cebu to arrive at Daegu at 5:10 am.

Data show that the number of September and October flight reservations to Southeast Asia on Jeju Air amounted to 384,900 passengers as of Aug. 20, up 58.3 percent from a year ago. The figure for September is 202,500 passengers, up 37 percent from a year ago, with the corresponding figure for October up 96 percent. In contrast, October reservations to Japan dipped 30 percent from a year earlier.

By Noh Hyun and Minu Kim

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