I earlier outlined Philippine Airlines plans to start Delhi – Manila flights in March 2019. We now have a more solid outline about the Delhi to Manila Philippines Airlines flights. The airline has pushed back the launch of their Delhi – Manila flights from March 31 to April 16, 2019. The airline will initially operate 3x weekly flights on Delhi – Manila, and increase it to 4x weekly from May 4, 2019.
Philippine Airlines A321neo Source: Airbus
Philippine Airlines have also changed the timings of the flight, perhaps to make them more friendly for passengers. The flight will have a morning arrival in Manila and a night departure from Manila. The new schedule for the flight is,
PR726 MNL 20:45 – 01:00 DEL 321 x135
PR727 DEL 01:45 – 10:45 MNL 321 x246
Philippine Airlines have published introductory fares starting at INR 23k roundtrip. However, the lowest and most consistent fares I could find were INR 29k roundtrip economy.
Philippine Airlines New Delhi-Manila
Business Class starts at INR 68k roundtrip.
Philippine Airlines New Delhi-Manila Business class
Philippine Airlines has a few paid seats for Economy class. It varies from INR 711-4264/-. You can grab free seats, but all the good ones are paid. The lighter shade of blue indicates all free seats whereas the darker shade indicates all paid seats.
Philippine Airlines Seat Selection Economy
Philippine Airlines will deploy an Airbus A321neo on this route. The A321neo has 12 lie-flat Business Class seats and 156 Economy seats. Philippine Airlines features B/E Aerospace Diamond seats in Business Class on the A321neo. These are the same seats you will find on a handful of Qatar Airways aircraft, United Airlines aircraft, KLM apart from others.
Philippine Airlines A321neo Business Class Source: Philippine Airlines
Philippine Airlines A321neo features in-seat power and USB outlets, seat-back screens and WiFi. Wifi is free for the first 15 minutes or 5mb. You can take a 3D virtual tour of the Philippine Airlines A321neo here.
Philippine Airlines A321neo Economy Class Source: Philippine Airlines
Philippine Airlines also has a published upgrade chart from Economy to Business Class which you can take advantage at the check-in counter. Upgrades to/from Delhi will cost $550.
Upgrade Chart
While the flight timings are ideal for those who are going to stay in the country, they aren’t suitable for connections. One can connect easily to regional destinations in Asia, but flights to the USA, Australia and New Zealand have long layovers on the onward journey.
Are you planning a trip to the Philippines? The new flights should be a good option for you to plan a trip to this exciting country.
Sadly PAL has closed DEL reservations and removed the flight from the PAL online timetable.
See the Twitter feed of airlineroute.net.
BTW, the comments regarding connectivity, esp TPAC connectivity, are rather off-base. The point of this service is or was to take advantage of the growing number of Indians visiting the Philippines. Connections are basically a side project. Not every airline is like KLM and its successors in the sixth-freedom transit game.
The Philippines has its own huge O&D across the Asia-Pacific region and across the ocean thanks in large part to OFW traffic–that means Overseas Filipino Workers.
Traffic between IN and PH has increased dramatically in recent years, and the A321neo–with sufficient range–was brought into the fleet, so the time was right to launch this service. (The 330 used earlier in the decade was too big, and the market too small.) See:
https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/reports/philippines-india-aviation-pal-to-delhi-inbound-tourism-grows-445347
I am not sure what happened. It could be internal issues at PAL or simply that bookings were not looking good. In any case, a route like this takes time to develop.
I reckon it should do well. Phillpines has tourist demand plus they will get free if they can offer competitive one stop fairs to the US. An A321 should not be challenging to fill. They will however need to adjust their schedules.
I guess right now they are seeing the connecting mix they will eventually get- SE Asia or Long haul?
They’ll probably adjust the schedule once they see how many passengers are connecting to other destinations.