PAL to start flights to New York in March 2015

Philippine Airlines will start flying to New York City on March 15, 2015, the flag carrier announced on Tuesday.

In a statement, PAL chairman and chief executive officer Lucio C. Tan said the auspicious start of regular flights to New York will coincide with PAL’s 74th founding anniversary.

PAL resumes its flights to the East Coast, around 18 years after it pulled out of the region in 1997.

The New York flight, which will be approximately 16.5 total flying hours, will be PAL’s longest route.

PAL will have four flights a week for its Manila-Vancouver-New York service. It will operate at Terminal 1 of New York’s JFK International Airport. PAL will have full traffic rights between Vancouver and New York.

Flight PR 126 departs Manila every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 11:50 p.m. Arrival in Vancouver is 8:50 p.m. on the same day. After a two-hour transit stop, the service continues on to New York at 10:50 p.m., touching down at Terminal 1 of JFK International at 7:00 a.m. the following day.

The return service, PR 127, departs New York at 11:00 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, arriving in Vancouver at 1:50 p.m. It departs the Canadian city at 3:20 p.m. and lands back in Manila at 8:35 p.m. the following day.

PAL will use the Airbus A340-300 jets, which seats 36 passengers in business class and 218 in economy.

The New York route will bring to five the airline’s US destinations which include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and Guam.

The New York service will also boost PAL’s flighths to Canada. Starting March 15, 2015, the current daily service between Manila and Vancouver will increase to 11 flights weekly with three departure times from Manila – mid-afternoon, early evening and late evening. Manila-Toronto will also add a fourth weekly frequency.

There are aroun half a million ethnic Filipinos reside on the East Coast, with over 253,000 in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, 90,000 in Virginia, 75,000 in Washington, D.C. and environs, and 31,000 in the Philadelphia metro area.