Philippine Airlines is unfazed by the planned entry of United Airlines in the Manila to San Francisco market.
“Philippine Airlines welcomes additional competition on transpacific routes, a sign of the strength and vitality of the air travel market between the Philippines and the United States,” the airline unit of tycoon Lucio Tan said in a statement.
“PAL has always embraced healthy competition among different players across our network,” it said.
PAL operates 37 weekly flights on US routes, including double daily flights to Los Angeles, daily flights each to San Francisco and Guam and several weekly flights to New York and Honolulu.
“Our efforts have helped boost tourism, facilitate stronger PH-US economic ties and serve Balikbayan families, business travelers and trade flows in recent decades. We remain committed to those efforts to serve North America,” PAL said.
United Airlines announced Wednesday that it would start new daily nonstop service from Manila to San Francisco in October this year.
The first westbound flight from SFO to Manila will depart on Oct. 29, 2023.
The new flight, still subject to government approval, will be the airline’s first trans-Pacific service from Manila since it started its operations in the country in 1982.
“We are excited to launch the new nonstop service from Manila to San Francisco to meet strong requests from our customers on both sides of the Pacific,” United Airlines’ regional director of sales for Greater China, Korea and Southeast Asia Wally Dias said.
“With this new nonstop service, we will be able to offer our Manila customers not only the convenient daily nonstop service to San Francisco, but also more than 70 one-stop destinations in the mainland US, Canada and Latin America via our hub in San Francisco,” he said.
Dias said the launch of its first trans-Pacific service shows the airline’s continued strong commitment to the Philippine market.