[Anonymous]

[FrequentPR]

With Filipino brewer San Miguel now having effective management control of Philippine Airlines, the latter has announced sudden planes to buy up to 100 planes – not all immediately of course.

Wilol San Mig be able to afford this?

[LeTigre]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/philippine-air-to-order-100-planes-after-san-miguel-deal.html

Apparently the new owners will be injecting $1billion into PAL, with an order for 100 aircraft to be placed soon and improvements made with the aim of having European safety bans lifted. It looks like the deal will be mostly for Boeing aircraft with both single and twin aisles. However, the airline’s new focus will be on long-haul full service flying, competing with SIA. They also want to join an alliance imminently so that means Oneworld or Skyteam to avoid SIA’s own alliance. Flights to London are hoped for soon.

Interesting developments but I think it will take more to remove Phillipine’s aviation blacklist from the EU!

[AMcWhirter]

PAL is not only having safety issues with the EU. It’s also up against the US aviation body.

The US classifies PAL as a Category 2 carrier which means that although it can continue to operate its existing US network, it cannot add more flights or destinations and neither can PAL change aircraft types.

So how on earth can PAL consider joining an alliance ?

[FrequentPR]

It is incongruous that the US has PR on an aviation Category 2 carrier and the EU bans Filipino carriers when organisations such as Lufthansa Technik have plane maintenance facilities in Manila that never seem to give any grief.

That said, I agree that it will be difficult to lift either – although hasn’t Garuda Indonesia (GA), with its arguably shocking prior record of calamity that is far worse than PR’s, at least managed to resume flying to Europe once it was taken off the EU blacklist?

[VintageKrug]

They came back in 2010:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-01/world-s-most-improved-airline-garuda-to-resume-europe-flights-as-ban-ends.html

I still wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole, alongside Air France longhaul and Turkish.

[Author]

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