Photo by Björn Schmitt (source: www.airliners.net)
Philippine Airlines (PAL) is the country’s flag carrier and Asia’s first commercially operated Airline founded in 1941. It is owned by Filipino billionaire Lucio C. Tan (Chairman and CEO). Hubs are Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Manila, where it occupies the Terminal 2 or NAIA 2 and Mactan-Cebu International Airport in Cebu City. The fleet consists of 40 planes flying to 31 international and 30 domestic destinations.
PAL was also the first Asian airline to cross the Pacific Ocean in 1946, establishing a regular service between Manila and San Francisco CA that same year. Despite it’s glorious beginnings, PAL became synonymous with incompetence, corruption, and, above all, notorious delays in the following decades. However, PAL kept expanding its network until it almost collapsed during the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Since then, PAL has slowly recovered. In 2007, PAL was the only Philippine airline to receive the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA). Unfortunately, PAL was downgraded by the US Federal Aviation Association (FAA) from category 1 to category 2 in 2008, making it almost impossible for PAL to further expand into its major market, the USA.
According to Skytrax PAL is a 3-Star Airline judged on criteria like staff service and product quality. In spite its recently refurbished long-haul fleet and new planes, PAL will never reach the top league of the airline industry (e.g. Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways), unless the airline management and staff start to focus on what airline business is really all about: providing costumer-oriented top service on air and on the ground.
Source: www.PhilippineAirlines.com
For flights and booking details, visit PAL’s website at PhilippineAirlines.com.
Sources:
- Wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines
- FundingUniverse.com
- Skytrax Forum: airlinequality.com/Forum/pal.htm
- Skytrax: airlinequality.com/Airlines/PR.htm
Asia’s First by Abaca 8 / RichieLGabion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Switzerland License.
