As the 4th largest carrier in the Philippines spread its wing in the Pacific, Zest Air announced on Thursday to media during a dinner hosted by its president and CEO Ambassador Donald Dee that the arrival of its new wide-bodied Airbus A330-300 early next year will start its Melbourne flight to cater primarily to Filipino and Australian tourists.
Dee told newsman during the airlines inaugural flight launch in Shanghai on Thursday at the Hua Ting Hotel and Towers in China’s financial district of Shanghai City that allocation of its entitlements between the Philippines and Australia will be used with a total of 1,546 weekly seats under Route A and will be operated in the summer schedules of 2013.
The occasion was graced by the Philippine Ambassador to China veteran diplomat Sonia Brady, consul general Charles Jose, David Wang, the airlines chief representative in China, tourism officials and travel officials from China and the Philippines.
Zest Air VP for marketing and sales Alfredo Herrera said the airline is working with its partnered airline abroad to connect the Philippines to other parts of the world and hoped to fly by July next year to Australia and New Zealand.
He added more non-stop international flights from Manila are scheduled this year as they launch Kuala Lumpur by October, Bangkok, Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore routes to their network.  
Zest Air currently operates 14 aircraft under its fleet with four Xian MA-60 turboprops, nine Airbus A320 and one Airbus A319 for domestic and international flights.
This includes services to Incheon, South Korea; Jinjiang,Quanzhou and Shanghai, China, and Taipei, Taiwan from points in Kalibo and Cebu.
In 2011, Zest Air carried 2.1 million domestic passengers and 220,000 international passengers with gross revenue of $140 million.
“This year we are looking at roughly about 500,000 international passengers and around 2.7 million in domestic,” said Herrera who aims for a total number of passengers to reach between 3 and 3.5 million.