PAL junks direct flights to New Delhi from Manila

Manila—Flag carrier Philippine Airlines has halted direct flights to New Delhi from Manila, less than a year since the route was announced, citing the lack of demand from local travelers.

But PAL president Jaime Bautista said the airline would not remove the Indian capital from its list of destinations. Instead, he said the company would mount flights to New Delhi via Bangkok, where the airline can pick up more passengers to ensure that the service stays sustainable, if not entirely profitable.

“We already stopped the direct flights to India last month,” Bautista told reporters in a recent interview.

PAL’s first direct flights to India were started late last March. This coincided with the easing of travel requirements for Filipinos to India with the introduction of the “visa on arrival” rule. PAL initially had six flights a week to New Delhi, three direct and three via the Thai capital of Bangkok.

The three direct flights a week were stopped last month, Bautista said. “The loads on direct flights were not that good,” he said, noting that load factors were averaging at around 50 percent.

Load factors refer to the ratio of seats sold on each flight relative to the number of seats available. With only half a plane full of passengers, Bautista said, the company had to absorb losses on every direct flight to India.

“The loads are much better on flights via Bangkok,” Bautista said, noting that about 70 percent of seats were filled.

The scrapping of direct flights to India was also part of the PAL’s scaling back of operations last September ahead of the retrenchment of 2,600 of its workers. The reduction of flights aimed to make the transition from in-house to outsourced services smoother.

Former PAL workers are still questioning the legality of their retrenchment, which was approved twice by the Office of the President.

New Delhi is the third of PAL’s new “missionary routes” the airline has launched, only to be met with tepid demand from the riding public.

In October of 2010, PAL had to stop flights to Brisbane less than a year of their introduction due to low demand. Last April, the airline’s unprofitable flights to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—which at the time were the only direct flights to the Middle East by any local airline—were also suspended./INQUIRER