Legacy carrier Philippine Airlines has announced it will launch on March 20 its first non-stop flight service to Perth, Australia.
“Starting March 20, 2020, the first non-stop service to Perth, Australia shall start. The four-times-a-week flights will utilize the 168-seater Airbus A321neo aircraft,” said PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna.
She said the airline first flew to Perth, the capital and largest city of Western Australia, via Darwin in 2013 and it currently operates 19 weekly flights to three Australian gateways—Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
By taking the non-stop flight to Perth, travelers will save at least four hours and a half in travel time vs. taking other airlines that require a stopover and flight connections.
Flight PR 223 (Manila-Perth service) will depart from Manila every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday beginning March 20, 2020, at 12:05 a.m., and arrive in Perth Airport at 7:20 a.m. local time.
The returning flight PR 224 (Perth-Manila service) will leave Perth’s Terminal 1 International at 8:40 a.m. local time and touch down in Manila at 3:50 p.m. on the same days.
“We are thrilled to welcome Perth to our network,” said PAL’s chief sales and chief marketing officer Eugene Go.
“Our pioneer nonstop flights will allow us to vigorously promote the Philippines as a top-notch tourist experience for residents of Western Australia, and we look forward to extending our gracious Filipino hospitality to them from the moment they step onboard our brand-new planes flown by our experienced professional crew.”
PAL’s 168-seater Airbus A321neo has 12 seats in business class and 156 seats in economy class. The business class cabin boasts generous seat pitch (legroom) of 60 inches and seats that are up to 23 inches wide and recline to become full flatbeds, measuring 78 inches in length.
The economy cabins offer ample stretching room with a seat pitch of 32 inches. For Inflight Entertainment, the myPALeSuite Personal TV screens are embedded in all seats across all cabin classes, giving passengers a choice of more than 300 hours of movies, TV and music. High-speed Wi-Fi connectivity is offered for all passengers.
PAL operates the largest network of flights between the Philippines and Australia. Perth is PAL’s fourth Australian gateway, joining Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, all of which are served with nonstop flights using Airbus A330 and A321neo aircraft.
Overall, PAL offers a total of nineteen (19) weekly nonstop flights to these four Australian destinations, as well as three weekly flights to Auckland in New Zealand and four weekly flights to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.
Australia is the Philippines’ fifth largest source of tourist visitors: 279.821 Australians visited the Philippines in 2018, while more than 203,000 Australians visited in the first nine months of 2019 alone.