Philippine Airlines, American Airlines Establish New Transpacific Links

Philippine Airlines (PAL) and American Airlines have entered a new codeshare partnership that will enhance the transpacific networks of both carriers.

Under the agreement, PAL will connect to seven of American Airlines’ domestic routes via the Los Angeles gateway. These routes are from Los Angeles to Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, and Washington.

PAL said this will be the first time a Philippine carrier has been able to market flights to some of these U.S. destinations.

From the American Airlines perspective, the codeshare will allow it to connect to PAL’s flights to Manila and Cebu in the Philippines via Tokyo. American Airlines customers will also be able to connect to PAL flights in Honolulu and Guam.

PAL has a reasonably extensive U.S. network, offering double-daily flights from Manila to Los Angeles, and daily flights between Manila and San Francisco. Its other U.S. routes are to New York, Honolulu, and Guam. American Airlines does not serve the Philippines.

According to data from CAPA and OAG, PAL has an 81.3% share of capacity between the Philippines and the U.S., as measured in weekly seats.

The only other carrier serving this market is United Airlines after it launched a San Francisco-Manila flight in October.

For the week of Dec. 4, PAL was operating 76% of its U.S.-Philippines capacity from the same week in 2019. Combined with the United flights, total capacity in this market was 93.6% of 2019 levels for the same week.