Brian Chien, senior manager for e-commerce and loyalty programs, told a Macau tourism forum Air Macau will shortly buy its first wide-body passenger jets, launch long-haul cargo flights and add new routes to Northeast Asia.

Air Macau earned 71.4 million patacas (HK$69.3 million) last year, reversing a 145.6 million loss the year before due to the effects of SARS. Revenue climbed almost 50 percent to 2.1 billion patacas. But 2004 also saw the arrival of discount airlines in Macau. AirAsia launched flights to the territory from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Tiger Airways joined the fight this year with flights from Singapore and is expected to soon announce flights from Macapagal International Airport near Manila. Nok Air is preparing to fly from Bangkok soon too.

Air Macau, which operates under a 25-year government concession as the territory's exclusive home carrier, last month agreed to share its rights with Golden Dragon, a start-up carrier that plans to operate regional jet flights to the mainland. A second start-up, Wow Macau, aims to finalize a subconcession agreement with Air Macau this month to allow it to serve medium- and long-haul routes.

Under this competitive pressure, Air Macau has given up its own services to Singapore and Bangkok, abandoning a strategy of using Southeast Asian routes to diversify from its precarious core business of carrying Taiwanese to and from the mainland.

The new plan is to look north. Air Macau began daily charter flights from Seoul in December. On Monday, the carrier will start a twice-weekly, summer-season charter flight from Pusan, South Korea. The Korean traffic will feed into a twice-weekly seasonal charter to Siem Reap, Cambodia, relaunched last Monday

Chien said Air Macau will fly twice a week from Kwangju, South Korea, next year. South Korean visitor numbers rose 130 percent in Macau in the first five months of this year.

The next target will be Japan. Chien said Air Macau will begin scheduled charter service to Tokyo next year. It operated charter flights to Takamatsu and Okayama in Japan earlier this year.

Chien said Air Macau will also begin daily service to the mainland cities of Hangzhou, Nanjing and Chengdu next year. The carrier doesn't presently serve Hangzhou, but flies to Nanjing and Chengdu three and four days a week, respectively.

Air Macau will acquire two Airbus A300-600R jets next year to operate the Tokyo flights as well as those to Shanghai and Taipei.

The jets will be the biggest and longest-range passenger aircraft in Air Macau's fleet, but even its mainstay planes are getting bigger. Chien said the airline will get rid of its remaining five A319 jets and one A320, bringing in seven A321s in their stead next year and three more the following year.

Air Macau is moving to even bigger planes for cargo. Chien said Air Macau will add one Boeing 747 jumbo a year until 2007. It will use the new planes to expand routes this year beyond Taiwan and the mainland to Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City. Another new route will land in Guangzhou, then next year, flights will go to New York, New Delhi and Frankfurt, he said.

Chien said Air Macau expects to achieve annual passenger growth of more than 10 percent through 2008. In February, the carrier launched a new frequent-flier program, which enlisted 33,000 members in three months.

zach.coleman@singtaonewscorp.com