MANILA, Philippines – Philippine Airlines (PAL) will start flying nonstop between Manila and Seattle starting October 2, 2024, becoming the first carrier to offer direct flights for the Philippines and the US Pacific Northwest regions.

The route will be served thrice weekly on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday using a Boeing 777-300ER, among the world’s largest long-range jets. It has 42 full-flat seats for business class passengers and another 328 seats for economy passengers. The flights will operate between Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1 and Seattle’s Tacoma International Airport.

Here is the schedule of PAL’s flights:

Introductory fares for the new route will run from April 2 to 30, with a travel period from October 2 to November 30, 2024, and February 1 to March 22, 2025.

The Seattle route will serve the bustling Pacific Northwest region, which is home to some 240,000 Filipino-Americans. Washington state also has the United States’ fourth-largest Filipino population, according to Port of Seattle Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa.

“We’ve been looking into Seattle for a long time already, even before the pandemic. It was always on our radar,” PAL president and chief operating officer Stanley Ng said. “The 240,000 diaspora in the region, we believe it will provide convenience for them to come home to the Philippines, as well as also the mainstream US citizens that would like to visit our beautiful country.”

Ng also highlighted that several big corporations also have headquarters in the Seattle metropolitan area – including Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Nintendo – which means that establishing a route to the Philippines could stimulate business between the two areas.

The route also connects traffic through Manila to PAL’s other destinations in Cebu, Davao, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Seattle is now PAL’s eight route in North America. The flag carrier currently has 46 weekly flights to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, Toronto, Honolulu, and Guam.

PAL’s newest competitor

PAL still maintains the largest network of nonstop flights between the Philippines and the US, but the Philippine-based full-service airline is not the only player in town anymore.

In October 2023, United Airlines launched its inaugural route between San Francisco and Manila, becoming the first-ever United States carrier to have a nonstop flight from the continental US to the Philippines. Like PAL, United is also a full service airline and competes at a similar price point.

Although the US carrier only has one route so far between Manila and the continental US, PAL admits that United’s entry in the space adds pressure.

“Definitely, we feel a little bit of pressure because once you have a competitor, you always just have to step up as well,” Ng said during a press conference on Tuesday, April 2.

“But we would also say that the market is really big enough for the two carriers,” PAL’s president added. “We just have to compete and provide the service that we can to our customers.” – Rappler.com