Philippine Airlines is working hard to rebuild its network to China, resuming routes and adding frequencies to five mainland cities and Macau.
After a break of three years, Philippine Airlines is relaunching its most popular routes to mainland China services, with the first connection to Shanghai already in the air. Before the pandemic, mainland China was the second largest source of tourists to the Philippines, with 1.74 million Chinese residents arriving in 2019.
On Wednesday, Philippine Airlines (PAL) announced it was relaunching services from the nation’s capital, Manila, to Shanghai and Beijing in China. The flights to Shanghai recommenced on Tuesday, and the Manila-Beijing route will reopen on February 21st.
Photo: KITTIKUN YOKSAP/Shutterstock
PAL is already back in Shanghai
On Valentine’s Day, PAL flight PR338 departed Manila Ninoy Aquino International (MNL) at 05:21 and landed at Shanghai Pudong International (PVG) at 08:02. The operating aircraft, a nine-year-old Airbus A330-300 registration RP-C8783 and MSN 1463, took 2:41 hours to cover the 1,844 kilometers (1,145 miles) route.
The Airbus widebody was on the ground in Shanghai for three hours before heading back to Manila, where it landed at 14:23. It then headed off on a much longer flight of nine hours to Honolulu International Airport (HNL), a rotation it repeated yesterday. In announcing the resumptions to Shanghai and Beijing, PAL President and COO Captain Stanley K. Ng said:
“We are forging ahead with the restoration of PAL’s Greater China flight network, an investment that will strengthen our connections to the economic hubs in the mainland and help boost bilateral relations between the Filipino and Chinese people.
“We hope that our relaunch of flights to Beijing and Shanghai will help fuel a rebound in tourist and business travel. Our goal is to once again operate the largest network of flights on multiple routes between mainland China and the Philippines.”
PAL is serving two other mainland Chinese cities, Xiamen and Guangzhou, and now plans to increase frequencies to meet growing demand on the popular routes. The airline is increasing its Manila-Xiamen-Manila flights from once weekly to three times weekly starting from February 25th. The Manila-Guangzhou-Manila services will increase from once to twice weekly starting February 16th and progressively increasing to daily flights beginning March 26th.
Photo: Airbus
Expansion into other parts of China
PAL also said that the next Greater China cities in line for resumption are Quanzhou (Jinjiang Airport JJN) and the special administrative region of Macau, with services set to start in March. The Manila-Quanzhou service will depart Manila on Sunday, March 19th, Wednesday, March 22nd and Friday, March 24th, before switching to daily from March 26th. The daily service will depart Manila at 11:10 and arrive in Quanzhou (JNN) at 13:40, arriving back in Manila at 16:55.
Starting on March 26, flight PR352 will depart Manila every Thursday and Sunday at 13:30 and arrive at Macau International airport (MFM) at 15:50. After a quick one-hour turnaround, flight PR353 will leave Macau at 16:50 and arrive back in Manila at 19:25.
Before COVID found its way into aviation, Philippine Airlines served the five Chinese cities with which it is now resuming flights. It operated 34 weekly flights to Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Quanzhou and Xiamen. While the pandemic ended those scheduled services, PAL did not abandon China, operating a mix of regular and ad-hoc all cargo and charter flights to the country. The passenger services included charter flights to Tianjin and Wuhan, some for special vaccine transport flights.
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