Companies
By Recto Mercene
April 1-2, 2011
NEW DELHI—Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) inaugurated its regular service here on Wednesday, linking the country with the Indian capital of New Delhi. The non-stop flight took six -and-a-half hours and touched down at the Indira Gandhi International Airport at 2:30 am with more than 200 passengers onboard.
Key government and PAL officials, led by airline chairman Lucio C. Tan, were welcomed by India’s tourism officials, businessmen, investors, travel and tourism officials.
Vivienne K. Tan, PAL executive vice president for commercial group, said the launch of the Manila-New Delhi route “is in step with the government’s program to perk up the economy by bringing in more tourists and serves as a vital air link between [the] two countries.”
Jaime Bautista, president and chief executivesaid: “PAL is flying to an India that’s a destination in its own right. [The] country has emerged in recent years as one of the world’s economic powerhouses. The booming economy has spawned a high-spending middle-class of 350 million consumers and is growing by 20 million every year, for whom travel is a major aspiration. In 2009, about 8 million Indians traveled abroad, of which 2 million went to Southeast Asia.
Bautista, however, pointed out that only 32,817 Indians visited the Philippines, far behind the figures in Singapore (726,000), Thailand (611,983), Malaysia (589,838), and Indonesia (150,000).
He said PAL will aim to accelerate this traffic stream by making available over 188,000 airline seats a year for Indian travelers. He added that these travelers now enjoy the convenience of having their travel time greatly reduced from the previous 10 to 30 hours via a third-country connection to just six and a half hours with direct PAL flights.
“Our new service also aims to increase Filipino visitors to India. The Indian government has made our job much easier when it adopted, earlier this year, a visa-on-arrival policy for Filipinos,” Bautista said.
PAL’s new service is also expected to boost business travel between the two countries, particularly in the rapidly growing information technology sector.
PAL is allocating 188,000 seats a year on the Indian route, in keeping with the provisions of the 2005 Philippine-Indian air services agreement that also allows PAL to fly seven times a week from any point in the Philippines to Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai (formerly Madras).
PAL’s return to India coincides with the carrier’s 70th anniversary and underscores the storied past of Asia’s first airline.
The flag carrier first flew to the subcontinent on May 3, 1947 when it stopped in Calcutta on a pioneering DC-4 service from Manila to Rome, Madrid and London, making PAL the first Southeast Asian airline to fly to Europe.
The stopover in Calcutta was essential because the propeller-powered DC-4 had limited range. The journey from the Far East to Europe took two days and frequent stops were necessary.
Despite the distance, the Manila-Calcutta and vice-versa legs of PAL’s flights to Europe were quite popular. India and the Philippines were young, newly independent republics then and there was much interaction between the two nations.
In 1954, the Philippine government ordered the suspension of PAL’s long-range services, including the one to Europe, as an austerity measure in the midst of an economic recession. Unfortunately, this had the unintended effect of cutting off the Calcutta connection.
When PAL resumed European flights in 1969, the new DC-8 jets made technical stops in South Asia unnecessary. Regrettably, the link to India was never restored—until today.
Philippines is a hot destination for Indian companies engaged in business process outsourcing, with the country now hosting more than 20 Indian BPO firms, including such industry giants as Accenture, Infosys, Aegis, Genpact, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services.
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