PR 8114, Anyone?

23 September 2017

PAL Flies Puerto Rico

There is no such flight number for the flag carrier. But on September 18, 2017 Philippine Airlines (PAL) went to Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Puerto Rico from Manila with technical stop at San Francisco international airport loaded with relief goods and supplies for the Filipino victims of hurricane Irma. 

The technical stop was also made for the Emergency Response Team from the Philippine Embassy in San Francisco together with airline personnel to board the plane heading to Puerto Rico to help facilitate repatriation of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) working in the Caribbean islands chain who would be traveling back to the Philippines on the chartered PAL aircraft.

The A340-300 plane was no stranger to San Juan, its capital, as it regularly flew with Iberia to Madrid before it began another life in the far east. On Monday it visited the place again as PAL flight PR8114 (RP-C4338) chartered by the Philippine government for repatriation of some 200 OFWs working in the British Virgin Islands and Netherlands Antilles.

However, only 90 Filipinos were able to board PAL flight PR8115 on Tuesday as the airline were directed to depart early.

PR8115 was expected to leave on the evening of September 19 together with twenty two more Filipinos from Sint Martin but were left behind after the Philippine government received advisory from Puerto Rican authorities Tuesday morning to leave early after radar reports showed the island to be in the direct path of Hurricane Maria another category 5 storm barely six hours away from hitting San Juan. It left San Juan at 11am and waited for the rest of the repatriated passengers in San Francisco before heading back to the Philippines.

A total of 132 OFWs from the British Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten and Anguilla were airlifted back to Manila on September 20 from San Francisco via PR 8115 which landed at Terminal 2 around 9:00pm.

"We praise and thank God for the successful rescue and repatriation of our hurricane-stricken kababayans from the Caribbean," Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano has said from New York.

PAL Mercy flight in Malta

18 August 2014

Around 768 Filipinos evacuated from Libya left Malta on board Philippine Airlines B747 (RP-C7471, 419 pax) and A330(RP-C8786, 349 pax) during the early hours of Saturday morning arriving Saturday evening (10pm) and Sunday early morning (3:45am) in Manila. Image courtesy Roberto Cassar for Malta Today

PAL Sends Two A330 To Europe For Mercy Flight

For The Love of The Filipinos

Philippine Airlines B777-300 (RP-C7777) at Crete International Airport in 2011. Images courtesy from Nikos Fazos.

9 August 2014

Flag carrier Philippine airlines PAL will send two Airbus A330-300 planes to Europe for mercy flight back home of stranded overseas Filipino working in strife-torn Libya.

The mercy flight is being chartered by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to the island of Malta, a European Union country in the Mediterranean Sea, on August 12.

The DFA was planning to charter both Boeing 777-300 from PAL but the airline said their new mono-class Airbus A330-300 carries more passenger at 430 than the Boeing triple seven at 350.  The government previously chartered two B777 flight to Crete, Greece three years ago.

PAL said its new A330 can fly fully loaded from Malta to Manila and it would take the airline about ten hours to fly there as earlier flown by the B777 to Crete in Greece but much farther. 

The DFA issued an order for the “mandatory” evacuation of all Filipinos in Libya last month, after the beheading of a Filipino construction worker abducted by unknown suspects in the eastern city of Benghazi.

That government said it would try to evacuate all of the 13,000 Filipino migrant workers in Libya but at present only 1,036 have registered to leave Libya and board a sea vessel capable of accommodating 1,500 passengers.

DFA said the transported passengers will be ferried to the Malta International Airport where charter flights from PAL will be waiting. 

The charter will last for three days and cost Filipino Taxpayer US$6,000 per passenger. But DFA spokesman Charles Jose said the national carrier has agreed to bring down the airfare cost to $1400 per person.