News

PAL adds to Vancouver, San Francisco and LA

18 Mar 2009

Bucking the trend of shrinking airline frequencies, Philippine Airlines (PAL) is going the opposite direction, adding new flights from Manila to Vancouver, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The airline now flies daily to Vancouver with the addition of two direct flights to the Canadian city every Monday and Wednesday on a wide-body Airbus A340-300 aircraft that seats 264 passengers in a two-class layout. The other five flights on this route head onwards to Las Vegas. The service is the only direct link between the archipelago and Canada where there is large immigrant community.

“PAL carries about 70,000 passengers a year on its Manila-Vancouver service. The service has been operating at full capacity ever since it was launched in April 2001,” said airline spokesperson Rene Soliman. "It is constantly overbooked and PAL has had to turn away potential passengers due to the lack of seats.”

He noted that main constraint to PAL increasing flights on the route is the bilateral air agreement between both countries, limiting Philippine carriers’ frequencies to Canadian gateways.

“We hope further amendments to the Philippines-Canada air treaty will allow PAL to operate even more flights to Vancouver in the future, depending on future demand, of course. (Then) we will consider flying to other Canadian cities as the market dictates,” he added.

As the Philippines enters its peak summer months, the airline will be adding one flight each to San Francisco and Los Angeles, using an A340-300 aircraft. The extra flight to Los Angeles will run every Friday between April 10 and June 19, while the extra flight to San Francisco will run every Sunday between April 12 and June 21.

The additional flights bring PAL’s total frequency to Los Angeles to 10 times weekly and to San Francisco to eight time weekly.

For more details, visit www.philippineair.com

Gigi Onag


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