18 June 2022
Philippine Airlines (PAL) has been plagued lately by maintenance issues of its long haul fleet, an airline executive said over the weekend.
VP of network planning Christoph Gärtner said the airline bounced back good rebuilding its long haul network fueled by strong demand to visit friends and relatives (VFR).
“Long-haul is leading the way for us right now,” Gärtner said during a panel discussion.
Strong growth to recovery was however hampered by its inability to service its long haul network as it find itself unable to handle the traffic volume that goes with VFR after its long haul fleet suffered unscheduled maintenance issues that affected its fleet rotations amidst its increasing number of long haul passengers.
“The reason for that is not business traffic but VFR. We mostly serve destinations with a large diaspora of Filipinos and that has been the backbone of our recovery.” He said.
PAL current long haul fleet consisted of six Boeing 777-300ER and 2 Airbus A350-900s, that flies to New York,Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Its flight to London was suspended after western sanction was imposed on its payment system to Russia for its overflight rights on its airspace. It has filed slot waiver for summer and winter schedule in 2022 for Heathrow airport.
VP Gärtner who was a former executive at Etihad and Air Berlin, spoke at Routes Asia 2022 in Da Nang, Vietnam, few days ago, and said they are redeploying two Airbus A330s to fly to Los Angeles due to maintenance issues of two of its long haul fleet.
The airline used to operate 10 B777s and six A359s, but returned half of its fleet to lessors when it filed bankruptcy protection (Chapter 11) in New York, and has since exited in January this year.
PAL used to have China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, as its biggest foreign market but is currently being restricted to fly at this destinations. Even flights to Australia and New Zealand is restricted.
Gärtner said that a major uncertainty from a network perspective remains how quickly China will reopen.
Before the COVID-19 crisis, Philippine Airlines operated six routes to destinations in mainland China, with the country ranking as its fourth largest international market by capacity.
“China is the big question right now,” Gärtner said.
“When will it reopen? Everybody hopes this year, but we can only guess at this stage. It’s going to be interesting from winter onwards because I believe slot waivers will be lifted.
“Manila Airport is heavily slot constrained. So, from winter onwards, we’re much, much more constrained in our planning.”
The carrier posted net profit of US$22 million in the first quarter of its operation after exiting chapter 11, and its international network is currently holding about 44% of its pre-pandemic capacity. However, its domestic capacity has rebounded more quickly and is back to 74% as of 2019 levels.
PAL attended the Routes Asia 2022 held from June 6 to 8 at the Da Nang International Exhibition Fair Center, and brought Airlines’ VP for Network Planning Christoph Gaertner, and AVP for Network and Fleet Planning Bryan Ang, together with other Philippine delegates.
The Philippines is the world’s fourth fastest growing economy in 2021.
Any chance they'll get one or two of their A350s back in the recent future?
ReplyDeleteNot until pass 2026 LH only began to fly them late-2021 and early 2022. Assuming the lease starts by those dates it will be sometime before Lufthansa has enough A359-900 in there fleet probably by 2027 base on my estimates
DeleteHow about the 77Ws?
Delete7782 is curreny stored offically has been withdrawn from the fleet. Though its rumored that it will return to PAL by 2025 when 7776 and 7777 extended lease expires AFIK most will be kept until the end of the decade unless a replacement type becomes available at an eariler date!
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