For decades of being branded Plane Always Late (the initials of Philippine Airlines), it is heartening to hear that PAL is now dubbed as Asia’s most punctual airline. This must be the effect of privatization, but no, even under previous management of San Miguel it still had records of tardiness and delays due to some mechanical defects or weather disturbances.
I read last Saturday the Daily Tribune that PAL outperformed most airlines in Southeast Asia, China and Australia, being ranked top 10 most punctual carriers in the Asia Pacific region in 2023. Keep it up, PAL, at least give us this honor when our country fails in all other categories.
The report said that in December 2023, PAL ranked second among Asia-Pacific airlines in terms of punctuality, with 83.08 percent of its flights arriving on time, in the newly- released Cirium On-Time Performance Report. PAL’s ranking is only higher than that of a minor airline from Thailand.
The only Philippine carrier to rank in the top 10 for the entire year 2023 was PAL, which came in eighth among the Top Airline Performers for the Asia Pacific area.
The full-year ranking follows five months in a row of PAL’s highest ratings as: a) the 3rd most punctual spot in September and November 2023, recording an 84.27 percent on-time arrival performance in November and 83.38 percent in September; b) 4th in October 2023 (with 82.74 percent on-time flights) and c) 7th in August 2023 (with 75.36 percent on-time flights).
PAL’s 2023 on-time arrival performance of 77.46 percent covered more than 105,000 recorded flights throughout the airline’s global network.
Over 3.76 million individual flights operated by airlines in the Asia-Pacific region, PAL’s 77.51 percent on-time performance was surpassed by PAL’s 76.46 percent performance.
“We are grateful to all our customers and stakeholders for their support, to our employees for their teamwork and dedication, and to our government authorities, whose productive collaboration and partnership helped us achieve the operational efficiencies needed to earn this ranking among the top 10,” said PAL president and COO Capt. Stanley K. Ng. (Now I see, it takes a pilot who also knows administrative processes to achieve this feat).
“We acknowledge that there is still room for improvement. I assure our passengers that the Philippine Airlines team will work even harder to sustain and improve our current performance,” he added. This same humble attitude is what would propel PAL to greater heights, I think.
The top 10 list for 2023 was completed by flights from Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, India and New Zealand.
The premier global source of aviation data analytics is Cirium, a company based in London. For over 15 years, Cirium has been monitoring the punctuality of airports and airlines worldwide, resulting in the most comprehensive punctuality analysis in the history of international aviation.
My take
Aside from humility– acknowledging limitations and finding ways to go beyond such obstacles– another factor is that of giving the value for money to its customers in terms of friendly and compassionate service, a grateful spirit and discipline of its staff, pilots, crew (both flight and ground) and a steadfastness for proper maintenance of planes and discipline for time.
Of course, investing in newer planes would help a lot but in difficult financial periods, companies must tighten expenditure and do their utmost best by maintaining their assets in tip top condition at all times.
For 2024, PAL is working with Airbus for two orders: a 13 narrow-body units and 9 wide-body jets to be funded by a combination of debt, equity and leases as part of efforts to balance PAL’s finances, reported PAL president/COO Stanley Ng.
Ng told the Star in 2023 that by end of that year it will operate 79 aircraft and is in discussion with aircraft leasing companies and financial institutions to purchase new planes to cover for new routes to be introduced in 2024.
PAL is set to open its biggest one soon at the Terminal 1 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport with the coming delivery of 13 A321neos each valued at $129.5 million that were ordered prior to the pandemic. It is also investing $3.2 billion for nine A350-1000s to be deployed in long-haul flights to North America and soon even Europe, even with an elevated cost of fuel, Ng told Star.
Kudos and keep on improving and bringing a good image to our country, PAL!
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