Philippine Airlines’ Manila-Doha route to benefit 200,000 Pinoys
This photo shows Philippine Airlines planes parked at the international airport of Manila. (Photo by TED ALJIBE / AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — Over 200,000 overseas Filipino workers are expected to benefit as flag carrier Philippine Airlines offers daily nonstop flights between Manila and Doha, Qatar, starting June 16. This will be via a codeshare partnership with Qatar Airways.
“This strategic cooperation also aims to deepen the socio-economic ties between the Qatari and Filipino communities,” said Thierry Antinori.
The chief commercial officer of Qatar Airways said so in a joint statement on Thursday.
“We are proud of the new codeshare flights and look forward to delivering increased benefits to global travelers,” Antinori said.
For this route, PAL will deploy its long-range Airbus A330-300 aircraft in a dual-class configuration. This includes 18 flat-bet seats in the business class and 341 seats in the economy class.
Apart from providing direct route to Doha, passengers will also be connected to over 170 destinations in Qatar Airways’ network. These include countries in Africa, the Americas, Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
“As PAL expands its presence across the globe, we are delighted to fore new alliances that build new connections and give our business and leisure passengers more flexibility and seamless access in flying to their desired destinations,” said Stanley Ng, president and chief operating officer of PAL.
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The airlines, in the long term, will work on promoting additional destinations in their networks to provide further connectivity.
Along with this, the flag carrier has been beefing up its route network here and abroad.
PAL, this month, announced the launch of its Manila-Da Nang flights starting July 1. It will be available three times a week.
The company will also increase flight frequencies in its Cebu hub by 10 percent, in time for the summer months. This means 287 weekly round trip domestic flights this month.
The flag carrier, in particular, will beef up capacities for flights to Siargao, Caticlan, Puerto Princesa, Coron, Tacloban and Davao.
By May 1, the airline will also begin operating daily flights from Clark to Siargao and Basco.
The airline flew 15.6 million passengers last year, up 6 percent from 2023. It also facilitated over 110,00 flights for the period, showing 5-percent increase.
