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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Philippine Airlines prepares to mount more flights to US
By Cherry T. Lim
AMID the festering open skies dispute with the United States, Philippine Airlines (PAL) will mount more flights to the US.
“Even without this US open skies, PAL will introduce Las Vegas as a new destination in March next year. We will extend our Vancouver flight to Las Vegas four times a week,” said PAL president Avelino Zapanta.
PAL currently uses 20 of the 36 weekly flight entitlements granted to Philippine carriers on the RP-US route before the frequency ceilings were lifted last Oct. 1.
True and real
PAL is now fighting for “true and real” open skies.
Zapanta told Sun.Star that the flag carrier, for instance, was interested in flying the Guam-Honolulu, or Honolulu-San Francisco, or Los Angeles-New York routes because there are many Filipinos it could tap there.
Playing field
“This is the only way we can even the playing field since US carriers can now carry traffic from Manila to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and all other cities around us,” he said. But PAL’s requests have been meeting resistance.
Another flash point is the so-called “seventh freedom rights,” which allow US carriers to fly to any point in the world from the Philippines without having to first go back to the US.
PAL says US cargo operators in Subic and Clark have already been using the seventh freedom structure, in violation of the bilateral air agreement and Philippine laws.
But global package delivery firm United Parcel Service in national papers yesterday said it was not using seventh freedom rights and that its current operations were within the bounds of the 1995 amended Air Service Agreement.
(October 7, 2003 issue)
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