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Tuesday, January 10, 2006
PAL to suspend flights to Riyadh (9:18 p.m.)
MANILA -- National carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) said Tuesday it will suspend flights to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 2 due to losses from competition from other airlines flying to the Middle East.
The decision to suspend the thrice-weekly flights followed "a long, careful review and comes after many years of company sustaining unviable operations in the Middle East as a public service to the Filipino community there," an airline statement said. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers are in the region.
PAL said the price of aviation fuel has recently risen to record highs, adding a burden to the "massive" numbers of unsold airline seats to the Middle East.
The airline said it will continue code sharing with Emirates and Qatar Airways to serve travelers to the region, and is in talks with other Middle East carriers to expand coverage of its code-share network.
The decision ends the airline's 27-year service to the Middle East, which at its peak in the mid-1980s to the early 1990s included flights to seven cities in four countries.
The airline did not say when it expected to resume flights to the Middle East.
It said the suspension is not expected to affect Filipino workers since its weekly flights accounted for less than 4 percent of the total airline seats between the Philippines and the region.
It said six national carriers from the Gulf region operate 43 flights weekly between the Philippines and the Middle East, plus 33 weekly flights by five Asian airlines with a total capacity of over 1.12 million seats a year.
However, all 76 flights carry only about half a million passengers, most of them Filipino workers.
PAL said the situation has led to "cut-throat marketing practices," with state-owned regional carriers driving fares "way below commercially viable levels" -- not only for flights to the Middle East, but also from the region to Europe. (AP)
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