Cebu vs Iloilo Airports: The Comparison Iloilo Loses, With the Numbers

In the same week of March 2026, one airline did two different things to two Visayan airports. Cebu Pacific trimmed Cebu to Singapore from seven weekly flights to five. It suspended Iloilo to Bangkok and Iloilo to Singapore outright.

That is the comparison, and the size figures only explain why it happened. Mactan-Cebu carried 11,604,218 passengers in 2025 against Iloilo’s 3,101,280, and on international traffic the ratio is not 3.7 to one but 23 to one. A network that thin does not get trimmed. It gets cut.

This page sets out both airports from their operators’ own statistics, prices what an international trip from Iloilo actually costs in time, and is explicit about the two things that could not be established.

The Numbers, and Where They Come From

There is no single Philippine dataset containing both airports, and that is not a small point. Mactan-Cebu is not CAAP-managed: it appears in CAAP’s national workbook with zero in every month. Cebu’s figures come from the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority, Iloilo’s from CAAP, and Manila’s from MIAA. Three publishers, three formats, and no common file.

Iloilo’s international share is the number to hold onto. It is a domestic airport with a couple of international routes attached, and 4.13 percent is what that looks like in a spreadsheet. Iloilo’s entire 2025 international throughput is about 15.8 days of Cebu’s.

Two cautions on figures in circulation. Mactan-Cebu is the country’s second-busiest airport measured by total passengers, and the ranking is not close: NAIA carried 52,107,504 in 2025 on MIAA’s own operational statistics, Cebu 11.6 million, and the next CAAP-managed airport, Davao, around 4.39 million. And MCIAA’s published Data Sheet gives route counts of 37 international and 36 domestic, which we do not use: it carries no date and its airline roster still names SilkAir, Tiger Airways and Vanilla Air, none of which exist under those names.

What One Airline Did, in One Week

Cebu Pacific publishes its own network advisory, and it is the cleanest evidence on this page because it is the carrier describing its own decisions.

Read the Cebu row against the Iloilo rows. The same airline, in the same fortnight, facing the same fuel bill, took frequency off a Cebu route and took Iloilo off the map for two destinations. That is what a hub does to a spoke when it has to save fuel, and it is the practical meaning of a 23-to-one international ratio: Cebu’s routes are dense enough to thin out, and Iloilo’s were not.

The commercial context is public and worth knowing, because it explains the direction rather than excusing it. Cebu Pacific posted an attributable net loss of PHP 5.91 billion in the first half of 2026 against a PHP 8.97 billion profit a year earlier. Provincial international routes were the first thing to go.

Both Iloilo routes return on 23 November 2026, outbound Monday, Wednesday and Friday, on the airline’s own announcement of 18 August. If you are reading this after that date, the suspension rows above have expired and the network is back to three Cebu Pacific routes.

The Two Things We Could Not Establish

The Scoot row is the one that matters. Iloilo has one confirmed international route today and a second whose status is open, and this page will not resolve it by guessing in either direction. An airline site that refuses a robot is not an airline that has stopped flying.

What Cebu Has That Iloilo Does Not

Route counts are the obvious answer and the least useful one, because no authority publishes a current route list for either airport. What is published, and what actually changes a trip, is the machinery around the flights.

Two of those rows do more work than the passenger totals.

The connecting time. Mactan-Cebu publishes a minimum connection of 35 minutes domestic to domestic and 60 minutes international, cut from 60 and 90 when it launched its air-to-air transfer product. Iloilo publishes nothing equivalent, and the reason is structural rather than administrative: a spoke does not need a connection standard because nobody connects there. What that means in practice is that a Cebu-based traveller can be sold a through-itinerary and an Iloilo-based one usually cannot.

The ground fares. Cebu’s airport publishes a fare table with a flag-down, a per-kilometre rate and a waiting charge. In Iloilo, the published record is a regional regulator saying that the PHP 600 people are charged from Mandurriao is improper because taxi fares must be meter-based. The Iloilo transport guide works through what that costs in practice and why the distance itself is disputed.

Why One Airport Publishes a Fare Table and the Other Argues About Meters

The difference in what the two airports publish is not carelessness. They are run under different arrangements, and the arrangements produce different behaviour.

Mactan-Cebu operates under a 25-year build-operate-transfer concession awarded in April 2014 on a highest-premium bid of PHP 14.4 billion, against seven bidders, on the Asian Development Bank’s own record of the transaction. The concession changed hands in stages: a third-minus-one-share sold in September 2022 for PHP 9.5 billion, and exchangeable notes maturing on 30 October 2024 delivered the remaining two-thirds, valuing the outgoing partner’s residual stake at PHP 7.76 billion. Aboitiz InfraCapital has run it since. The government authority still exists alongside the private operator, which is why MCIAA publishes the statistics and the concessionaire publishes the transport guide.

Iloilo has no concessionaire. CAAP runs it directly, as it runs most Philippine airports, and a regulator with a national estate does not maintain a per-airport transport page. That is the mechanism behind the gap in the table above, and it is also why Iloilo’s fare question ends up with a regional franchising board rather than with the airport.

It is worth being clear about what the concession has and has not bought. Aboitiz InfraCapital’s disclosed spend is PHP 231 million over two years, and it is operational upgrading rather than capacity expansion. The master plan commissioned for the airport was due in July 2025 and its contents have never been published, so what Cebu intends to build after the second runway is not a matter of public record either, and the airport authority says its third terminal’s timeline is undetermined.

On capacity the two are asymmetric in a way worth stating precisely. MCIAA publishes floor areas rather than a passenger capacity, but the Asian Development Bank’s own project record for the concession gives the design figures: 4.5 million passengers a year for the domestic terminal and 8 million for the international one. The same document elsewhere states a 17 million figure that does not reconcile with its own 4.5 plus 8, so the per-terminal numbers are the ones to use and any combined total is contested. Iloilo’s design capacity of roughly 1.2 million is published by CAAP and is the cleaner figure of the two.

Cebu Is Not Immune, and Its Own Numbers Say So

The asymmetry on this page is real and it is not the same as Cebu being untouched. Read Mactan-Cebu’s own monthly international series for 2026 and the direction is unmistakable.

January was an all-time monthly record of 1.3 million total passengers. International traffic then fell for five consecutive months, from 358,519 in January to 205,374 in June, with month-on-month declines of roughly 9, 7, 12, 9 and 15 percent. June was the first year-on-year contraction of 2026.

Two cautions on reading that. First, the first half of 2026 already carried 1,704,104 international passengers, which is 57.5 percent of the whole of 2025, so Cebu is not shrinking year on year and framing it that way would be wrong. Second, the decline is a fuel-price story shared with Iloilo rather than a Cebu-specific problem, and the decision framework sets out the carrier-by-carrier detail.

What Cebu has that Iloilo does not is a pipeline. Nagoya is announced for 19 November at four times weekly, Shanghai for 17 November at three times weekly, and Ho Chi Minh City resumes on 26 October. Recent additions include Guam on Philippine Airlines, Kuala Lumpur on two carriers, Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines, Macau and a Korean route into Cheongju. Iloilo’s entire published 2026 pipeline is the restoration of the two routes it lost.

What the Terminal Can Actually Hold

Iloilo’s terminal opened in 2007 with a design capacity of roughly 1.2 million passengers a year. It handled 3,101,280 in 2025, about 2.6 times its design load, in the original floor area.

CAAP has responded with refurbishment rather than expansion: around PHP 190 million covering terminal works, three 600kW chillers, apron and runway. Peak-hour terminal capacity rises from 367 domestic and 360 international to 675 and 407. That is real and it is not a rebuild.

The rebuild died. A PHP 21.16 billion unsolicited operate-and-transfer proposal held original proponent status from 2019, negotiations ended in September 2024 without agreement, it was never Swiss-challenged, and the national planning agency declined the sign-off that a proposal above PHP 15 billion requires. As of July 2026 the transport department is considering a solicited tender instead. No timetable, no approval, no bid documents.

One thing not to assume. CAAP’s own environmental management manual for the airport, dated 24 September 2025, lists an instrument landing system, DME and VOR among its operating equipment. A separate CAAP tender from July 2025 sought the purchase and installation of an ILS for Iloilo at PHP 62.95 million, which is consistent with a replacement as easily as with a first installation. We do not assert that Iloilo lacks an ILS, and neither should anyone else without a source.

What This Costs You, in Hours

Cebu Pacific has quantified the answer itself, in the course of selling the route it later suspended. Before direct Hong Kong service, the trip from Iloilo meant connecting through Manila and up to twelve hours with layovers, against under three hours direct. The airline claimed a saving of up to nine hours and up to 20 percent on the round-trip fare.

That is the number to hold, because it is what Iloilo reverts to whenever a route is suspended, and two of its three were suspended for most of 2026.

The transit mechanics differ by carrier and they are worth knowing before booking. Cebu Pacific uses NAIA Terminal 3 for all its flights, domestic and international, so an Iloilo to Manila to overseas connection on one ticket stays in one building. Philippine Airlines does not: domestic is Terminal 2 and international is Terminal 1, which means baggage reclaim, customs and an inter-terminal transfer. Connecting through Cebu always changes terminals, since T1 is domestic and T2 international, and that is exactly what the 60-minute international connection standard exists to cover.

Who Should Care, and Who Should Not

1. If you leave the country several times a year, this is the dimension that decides the city. Nine hours each way, several times a year, is a week of your life, and it recurs whether or not a route is flying that month.
2. If you leave once or twice a year, it is a fare difference and an annoyance, not a reason to choose Cebu. The cost breakdown shows the rent gap is worth far more per month than the flights are.
3. If you fly domestically, Iloilo is fine. Seven destinations including Manila and Cebu at high frequency, and 96 percent of its traffic is domestic for a reason.
4. Do not plan around the November restoration until it flies. Two of these routes were already suspended once in 2026.
5. Check Scoot yourself before assuming Singapore is available. We could not, and the airline is the only one who can tell you.

Every figure on this page is registered against the source it came from, on the basis set out in our methodology. The wider scoring of the two cities, across airport reach and nine other dimensions, is in the decision framework. This page is the depth behind one row of it, and the row goes to Cebu.