PAL asks for more flight entitlements in Philippine-Canada routes

MANILA, Philippines – A month before the maiden flight of legacy carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) from Manila to Toronto in Canada, tickets are already sold out.

“Yes, we are sure to fly to Toronto. In fact, I was told our tickets were sold out,” PAL president Ramon Ang told reporters on Friday, September 28, referring to the airline’s 2nd foray into Canada.

This is why PAL is asking the Philippine air negotiating panel for another, as well as separate, 7 flight entitlements for the Manila-Toronto route.

This request is on top of the existing 7 flights-a-week the panel allocated to PAL for the Manila-Vancouver route.

These flight entitlements are sealed and agreed during bilateral negotiations between the air panels of both countries. In turn, each panel allocates the agreed number of flight entitlements to their local commercial airlines.

PAL will be the only local airline flying soon to Canada, which hosts a sizeable Filipino migrant community and a key destination of business and leisure travelers.

Given its limited flight entitlements now, PAL will temporarily carve out its 3x-a-week Manila-Toronto maiden operations from the current 7x-a-week Manila-Vancouver operations.

PAL’s Manila-Vancouver operations will then only have 4x-a-week, according to PAL officer-in-charge for commercial group Rafael Rollan.

“Ideally, if we can secure another 7 or more, that is what we want,” said Rollan.

In the meantime, PAL is also trying other means. It is eyeing to lease some of the flight entitlements the Canadian negotiating panel allocated to Air Canada, which is not mounting flights for the route.

“We wrote them (Air Canada) a letter but they have not responded to us. They also have 7 but unutilized entitlements. Hopefully, they could lend us their frequencies through code-share because this arrangement was done before,” said Rollan.

PAL also leases out to, or code-shares its own flight entitlements to Middle East routes with, other airlines in that region. PAL does mount its own flights there but earns from the code-sharing agreements. – Rappler.com