PAL plans to launch Delhi and Mumbai services in Sep-2018

Philippine Airlines (PAL) president Jaime Bautista, speaking to CAPA on the sidelines of the IATA AGM and World Air Transport Summit, stated (03-Jun-2018) PAL plans to launch services to Delhi and Mumbai in Sep-2018 using its new fleet of long haul configured A321neos. Delhi and Mumbai will each initially be served three times weekly and will be the second and third long haul routes for PAL's A321neos after Brisbane, which will transition from A340s to A321neos in Jul-2018. PAL took delivery of its first long haul configured A321neo at the end of May-2018 and is slated to take another five aircraft by the end of 2018. Mr Bautista said the six aircraft will be used for Brisbane, Delhi, Mumbai, Sapporo, Sydney and Melbourne. PAL plans to launch Sapporo in Sep-2018 or Oct-2018. PAL is looking at using the last batch of long haul configured A321neos to add a second daily frequency to Sydney, supplementing seven weekly frequencies now operated with A330-300s. PAL is also considering increasing Melbourne to daily with some or all of the frequencies operated with A321neos. PAL recently upgraded Melbourne from three to five weekly frequencies using A330-300s.