Cebu Pacific, the country’s largest budget airline, is launching a “big drive” to rehire pilots and cabin crew with prepandemic recovery in full view amid an ongoing demand surge.

The low cost carrier saw a rebound from the Omicron-induced slowdown last month and was on track to reach 60 to 65 percent of its prepandemic domestic capacity in February, Michael Szucs, Cebu Pacific chief executive adviser, told Bloomberg News in an interview on Feb. 15.

He said the figure would climb to 100 percent capacity by April this year as restrictions are further rolled back.

“That is a massive change compared to where we were in the early parts of the pandemic,” Szucs said.

“What is going to happen in this market is we are going to see everyone wanting to travel again. We are seeing that in terms of the demand surge,” he added.

This is also prompting the carrier to bring back employees that were retrenched in 2020 as the industry struggled with plummeting cash reserves while flights were grounded by the global health crisis.

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