Philippine Airlines increasing capacity to North America, London

Philippine Airlines has announced it will increase capacity on various North American and London routes in the next two years. The capacity increase will be done after the airline acquires eight new long-haul aircrafts. Media reports said that the capacity to London will be increased later this year, while North American routes are expected to see the increase in 2018 to 2019 by nearly 50 percent.

According to the reports, Philippines national carrier will be deploying two additional Boeing 777-300ER aircrafts on Manila-London route which it will receive later this year. These two new aircrafts will significantly increase the capacity on this route. Philippine Airlines had earlier announced that it would operate flights between London and Manila utilizing its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft effective from September 19, 2017. The airline is planning to serve Manila-London route with daily flights from December this year.

Philippine Airlines is presently serving Manila-London route with Airbus A340 aircraft configured with a total of 254 seats. With the launch of Boeing 777-300ER aircraft on the route the capacity will increase as the customers will be offered total of 350 seats, which will be more than what is being currently offered in Airbus A340 aircraft. The airline also said that in addition to the capacity increase, the route being presently served with four-times per week flights would become a daily service from December this year onwards.

It may be noted that Philippine Airlines had initially launched flights from Manila to London with the help of Boeing 777-300ER aircrafts. However, the airline has been serving Manila-London route with the smaller Airbus A340-300 aircraft for the past three years. Now that the airline has decided to once again operate flights on this route utilizing its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft from mid-December this year, the capacity is set to increase with 2,590 seats one-way per week thus marking a growth of 40 percent in the capacity. This will also be London market’s highest capacity level offered by the airline since it first launched flights on the route in November 2013.