History

• Philippine Airlines was founded in 1941. Their first domestic flight took place a month later. During WWII, the planes from Philippine Airlines were used by the military. After the war, they went back to domestic flights, serving 15 destinations. They became the first airline in Asia to cross the Pacific with a flight to Oakland, California in 1946 and regular flights to San Francisco began the same year. Flights to Europe began in 1947. In the early 60s, they began service to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Taipei. Philippine Airlines ran into trouble in the 1990s because of too many unprofitable flights and the due to Asian financial crisis of 1998, followed by two strikes. They were forced to apply for receivership. The company got rid of half of the fleet, cut back on flights to Europe and were completely shut down in September of 1998. The shutdown only lasted two weeks--they came back with just domestic service at first and gradually added on international flights. The company started showing a profit again in 2000 and are out of receivership.
  
  

Function

• Philippine Airlines has two hubs in the Philippines: Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila and Mactan-Cebu International Airport in Cebu City. As of 2008, Philippine Airlines flies to Southeast Asia, East Asia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Bahrain, Sidney and Melbourne, Australia, Vancouver, Canada and San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Honolulu in the United States. Philippine Airlines operates its own aviation school and trains all of its pilots and flight crew.
  
  

Features

• Philippine Airlines offers package deals that include hotels, meals and transport. Different items are available depending on the package chosen. They also run special promotions, which change four times a year. Philippine Airlines will handle the booking of your hotels through a partnership with Octopus Travel, giving you your choice of 21,000 hotels. The airline will also provide special meals for passengers with any food restrictions.
  
  

Offices

• In addition to maintaining offices in the cities that they fly to, Philippine Airlines has offices in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. All of the offices, whether they are in a city they service or not, are able to book both passenger and cargo for any of the Philippine Airlines flights. For instance, if you are flying to Manila on another airline from London and want to fly out of Manila on Philippine Airlines to a different location, you can make your reservations at the Philippine Airlines office before you leave London.
  
  

Equipment

• As of 2008, the Philippine Airlines fleet consists of a total of 46 planes. There are 17 wide bodies, 21 airbuses and eight turboprops. The turboprops are used for their Express airport-to-airport cargo services. Philippine Airlines was one of the first to use the huge airbuses--planes that carry more passengers, but are longer rather than wide.