Flag carrier Philippine Airlines will start flying to New York City on March 15, 2015, marking its much-awaited network expansion to the United States East Coast.
“This auspicious start of regular flights to New York will coincide with PAL’s 74th founding anniversary,” PAL chairman and chief executive officer Lucio Tan said in a statement.
The Manila-Vancouver-New York service will have a frequency of four times a week and operate at Terminal 1 of New York’s JFK International Airport. PAL said it will have full traffic rights between Vancouver and New York.
The New York flight brings PAL’s U.S. destinations to five, following Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and Guam. Covering a distance of 14,501 kilometers, or about 16.5 flying hours, it will be PAL’s longest route.
Flight PR 126 departs Manila every Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 11:50 p.m. and arrives in Vancouver at 8:50 p.m. on the same day. After a two-hour transit stop, the service continues on to New York at 10:50 p.m., touching down at Terminal 1 of JFK International at 7 a.m. the following day.
The return service, PR 127, departs New York at 11 a.m. every Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, arriving in Vancouver at 1:50 p.m. It departs the Canadian city at 3:20 p.m. and lands back in Manila at 8:35 p.m. the following day.
The operation will utilize Airbus A340-300 jets, which seats 36 passengers in business class and 218 in economy.
PAL noted that the New York service will have the added benefit of boosting its Canadian operations. From March 15, 2015, the current daily service between Manila and Vancouver will rise to 11 flights weekly with three departure times from Manila.
The Manila-Toronto service will likewise add a fourth weekly service, increasing capacity on this long-haul route in time for the peak summer travel period out of Manila next year.
PAL said its return to the U.S. has been “keenly anticipated” by the huge Filipino-American communities along the U.S. eastern seaboard ever since the flag carrier pulled out of the region in 1997.
Almost half a million Filipinos reside on the East Coast, with over 253,000 in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, 90,000 in Virginia, 75,000 in Washington and environs, and 31,000 in the Philadelphia metro area. All in all, Filipinos on the East Coast account for 15% of the estimated 3.4-million-strong Filipino population in the U.S., comprising a natural base market for PAL.
The additional U.S. flights were made possible when the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration restored in April the Category 1 status of the Philippines, allowing local carriers to add direct flights to the U.S.
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