Flag carrier Philippine Airlines launched an inaugural flight to New York via Vancouver on Sunday evening, after an 18-year absence, as a part of its network expansion to the US East Coast.
PAL, a 74-year-old airline which flew its first aircraft from Manila to Baguio on March 15, 1941, is embarking on US network expansion this year following the lifting of the Category 2 rating by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
PAL chairman and chief executive Lucio Tan said the start of regular flights to New York coincided with PAL’s 74th founding anniversary. Asia’s first airline marked the anniversary Sunday with the start of four-times-weekly service to New York City, one of the world’s largest financial capitals.
The airline first flew to New York in 1996, but pulled out the service a year later at the height of the Asian financial crisis.
PAL president Jaime Bautista said the airline resumed flights to New York as an “answer to the clamor of the huge Filipino community in the US East Coast.”
“We are confident we will be able to meet the expectations of our passengers in New York with PAL’s brand of quality service that is distinctively Filipino,” Bautista said.
Filipinos on the East Coast accounted for 15 percent of some 3.4-million Filipino population in the US, according to official data. PAL said about half a million Filipinos reside on the East Coast, with more than 253,000 in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, 90,000 in Virginia, 75,000 in Washington DC and environs and 31,000 in the Philadelphia metro area.