Hong Kong-based air carrier Cathay Pacific may add four more flights to Bali between July and October this year, despite a drop in tourist arrivals to the island following the terrorist bombings last October.

The airline's country manager for Indonesia, Richard Reed, told a local newspaper that despite the decreased number of tourists visiting Bali over the past few months, Cathay was optimistic passenger numbers to the island would increase in the coming months.

Cathay, which operates 95 aircraft globally, currently has seven flights a week to the island. Last year, the airline served 98,886 passengers to Bali.

"Although the increase in frequency is still a plan, our sales teams from Japan and (South) Korea assure us that so far things are looking positive," he was quoted Friday by The Jakarta Post as saying.

Indonesia's Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said earlier this week that before the bombings in October, the average number of foreign tourist arrivals in Bali was 5,000 a day.

Wacik said that between October last year through the end of January foreign tourist arrivals had fallen to about 3,000 per day, increasing slightly to about 3,600 a day in the first week of February.

Source: Xinhua