Philippines Airlines to order 100 new aircraft

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/philippine-...080004252.html

They are trying to get out of EU blacklist. After they banned into EU airspace due to safety concerns. They already served to FCO as well.

Also, PR is possibility for 747-8I as well by replace the 747-400 aircraft.

http://philippineairspace.blogspot.c...idebodies.html

PR will decide to choose 747-8I or A380.

PR is considering service to ORD, JFK or Florida as well. Also, FAA will restore the category 1 status.

Very interesting, also it says that the 77Ws aren't allowed to replace the 744 on US routes until certain certification safety criteria are met. Hopefully that will occur.

It's also interesting that the 747-8I is being considered as the flagship model above the 77Ws...guess they need the extra capacity,

With all the capacity problems at MNL, plus Philippine Airlines themselves stating they would voluntarily decrease flights, moving to larger planes is probably the best solution.

I am reading a lot of politics into this deal

No politics please!

I wonder where the politics lies in this. Sure, Boeing executives visited San Miguel, but I don't think it will do anything significant at the moment to bring the Philippines back to Cat I. (Then again, I might be wrong.)

Anyway, up to $8.5 billion will be poured into PR over ten years, according to the Wall Street Journal. ^

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...&postcount=305

It will be nice if whenever they can bring something to the US with a range that can consistently make LAX-MNL without the tech stop in GUM or HNL. 747-8I would be great on that route. Also a great point in the article about the A380's being to big for facilities and Philippine domestic airports outside MNL, since PR uses their long haul wide bodies for short domestic hops on their off hours between long haul flights.

100 aircraft is a lot of frames for PR... even including its low cost offshoots.

747-8i is clearly an ideal aircraft for PR's North America service (no ETOPS restriction, enough range, right seat capacity, extra cargo volume). A380 is too big and 77W has to take a longer route.

Hear unconfirmed news its still CAT2 for NAIA.

I'm not sure of current loads but in recent chat and picking up/dropping of friends, PR has been cancelling one of the two LAX flights, merging both to one flight for the night.

Definitely a 747 fits nicely if its two flights merged to one but i would think PR want to use twin engine 777W, maintaining two flights, instead for this route.

PR should also consider increasing its cargo business.

Gas prices are still high and other Asian carriers are already sending negative outlook and cost cutting.

and whose paying for this? give me 1 year and i'll turn PR into profitability? a good way to start is to always sink yourself into a deeper hole by buying $8 billion worth of planes right?

Uh, San Miguel is pouring a lot of money into PAL in a bid to diversifying into other businesses, so I don't think PAL itself will be buying its way to debt the way it did in the 1990s when Lucio Tan came in.

So what if San Mig is footing the bill? The end result is that the airline won't be profitable in a year like Ang said. Who is he kidding with that crap. PAL has so many issues that it's going to take more than a year to fix everything.

The only way this airline becomes profitable is if they rebrand themselves and follow a CX/KA route. That means shift all the domestic businesses to AirPhil and focus on long-range, long-haul flights with PR.

But even I don't think that's going to work. Manila is not blessed with a prime location on golden routes like BKK with TG, HKG with CX, DXB with EK, AUH with EY...etc. Those airlines all thrive on either the Kangaroo Route or the TPE-HKG routing. I don't know why anyone would go the other way, waste 5 hours and burn a lot of fuel to get to Manila.

Geography is manifest destiny... PR will never be able to compete with CX/SQ/TG/EK on Kangaroo route, and it will never be able to compete with KE/OZ/JL/NH on North America transit to China. And unlike CI/BR, it doesn't have a robust enough O&D premium business traveler market to sustain long haul service or massive short haul traffic to China/HK to pay the bills.

I don't really have a solution to offer but PR is an classic case where Govt subsidy is probably inevitable if it is important for the country to have its own long haul carrier. There is a reason why the Scandinavian countries pooled their resources and formed a multi-national flag carrier. They couldn't compete with better situated flag carriers based in London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt. Sometimes, there is no overcoming geography.

Yet in the late 1980s, PR was touting geography as the reason why it was such a strong carrier to begin with. So now what happened?

(Also, PR did compete on the kangaroo route in the 1990s: if I'm not mistaken, BA was part of the reason why PR failed in this regard.)

From a business point of view, this deal will never work. The airline will bankrupt itself unless a large cash infusion from the government. There are a lot of other things in play here.