With Seats Growing Scarce, Philippine Air Returns
<B> With Seats Growing Scarce, Philippine Air Returns</B>
By Robert Selwitz
<I>Philippines</I> - Philippines-bound air passengers should book their seats as early as possible. With the long-term status of Philippine Airline's U.S. services in flux, and United Airlines having dropped its coverage last winter, space on Northwest and Continental is in hot demand.
After firing a third of its striking pilots, fighting off creditors who wanted to seize its assets and several weeks where all North American flights were suspended, Philippine Airlines has just resumed U.S. service. As of last week, that included five weekly departures from Los Angeles and five from San Francisco. Former links between Manila and Vancouver and Hawaii have been permanently dropped.
With its return, Philippine regains its former advantage of being the only carrier that offers nonstop service between the United States and Manila.
Northwest offers connecting service to Manila via its Tokyo hub out of Anchorage, Detroit, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, San Francisco and Seattle, and also services Manila out of Osaka. Continental also continues to serve Manila, via Continental Air Micronesia out of its Guam hub.
Minda Hidalgo, Philippines Airline's director of marketing and sales administration based in San Francisco, said that 25 percent of the carrier's original pilots are still on the job. The remaining positions "are being filled by replacements for those who went out on strike, and were fired when they refused management's orders to return to work by a specific date in June."
According to industry observers, Philippine Airlines' crisis was triggered by extensive aircraft purchases made last year, just as Asia's economic crises started to boil. Now attempting to reschedule more than $2 billion in debt, the carrier plans to sell or lease 40 of its 54 airplanes, and has greatly reduced its number of routes and terminated nearly a third of its staff.
The pilot's strike was in response to those cutbacks, which management said were mandatory for the airline's survival.