Philippine Airlines (PAL) is the flag carrier of the Philippines, operating from its base at Ninoy Aquino International Airport. PAL is the oldest airline in Asia operating under its original name, having been founded in 1941.
Beginnings (1930–1959) Philippine Aerial Taxi Company On December 3, 1930, the Philippine Aerial Taxi Company (PATCO) was established by Emanuel N. Bachrach. It commenced operations on March 18, 1931, with a round-trip flight from Manila to Iloilo. The company then had scheduled Manila-Baguio and Manila-Paracale flights.Patco . timetableimages.com The company became dormant for six years on its scheduled passenger operation under its assigned routes. During the 1930's, the airline was based in Grace Park Airfield.
Philippine Air Lines On February 26, 1941, Philippine Air Lines, Inc., was formally incorporated by a group of businessmen headed by Andrés Soriano Sr. At that time, he was hailed as one of the Philippines' leading industrialistsMilestones in the History of PAL, Philippine Airlines. Retrieved October 2011. and served as the airline's general manager. Soriano and former senator Ramón J. Fernández acquired the franchise of Philippine Aerial Taxi Company, Inc. and renamed Philippine Air Lines (PAL). The airline's first flight took place on March 15, 1941, with a single Beechcraft Model 18 NPC-54 on daily services between Manila (from Nielson Field) and Baguio. It carried two pilots and five passengers on its maiden flight. The five passengers were the founders of the airline – Soriano, Fernández, Juan Miguel Elizalde, John R. Schultz and Ernesto Von Kaufmann. Government investment in September 1941 paved the way for its nationalization. On October 23, 1941, John R. Schultz was elected by the board of directors as treasurer of Philippine Air Lines.
PAL services were interrupted during World War II, which lasted in the Philippines from late 1941 to 1945. Upon the outbreak of the Pacific War on December 8, 1941, the two Model 18s and its pilots were pressed into military service. They were used to evacuate American fighter pilots to Australia until one was shot down over Mindanao and the other was destroyed on the ground in an air raid in Surabaya, Indonesia.
On February 15, 1946, PAL resumed operations after a five-year hiatus with service to 15 domestic points with five Douglas DC-3s and a payroll of 108 names. Philippine Airlines returned to its original home, Nielson Field in Makati. The airport, heavily damaged during the war, was refurbished and modernized by PAL at a cost of over one million pesos, quickly becoming the official port of entry for air passengers into the Philippines. The airport was operated by Manila International Air Terminal, Inc., a wholly owned PAL subsidiary.
On July 31, 1946, PAL became the first Asian airline to cross the Pacific Ocean when a chartered Douglas DC-4 ferried 40 American servicemen to Oakland, California, from Nielson Airport with stops in Guam, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll and Honolulu. A regular service between Manila and San Francisco started in December 1946. During this time, the airline was designated as the country's flag carrier.Philippine Airlines Info Kit 1982, Philippine Airlines. 1982.
PAL commenced service to Europe in 1947 with the acquisition of more Douglas DC-4s. By 1948, PAL had absorbed the only other scheduled airlines in the Philippines, Far Eastern Air Transport and Commercial Air Lines.Flight International April 12–18, 2005 Following the government's decision to decommission Nielson Airport and condense all aviation operations at the former U.S. Air Force base Nichols Field in Pasay, which is being converted as the new international airport for Manila, PAL was required to move its base of operations and passenger terminal there from Nielson Airport. The transfer was accomplished over a five-month period from January 31 to June 28, 1948, with PAL investing an additional P600,000 in ground installations and improvements to Nichols Field.
In 1951, PAL leased a DC-3 named Kinsei to Japan Airlines, which led to the founding of the country's own national airline.JAL's "Kinsei", Japan Airlines. Retrieved April 23, 2008. In March 1954, the Philippine government suspended all flights to Europe, Japan and the United States, only to resume five years later. In three years PAL started services to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Taipei using Convair 340s that would later be replaced by the Vickers Viscount 784, which brought the airline into the turboprop age.
First expansion and modernization (1960–1991)
In the 1960s, PAL entered the jet age, initially with a lone Boeing 707 that was later replaced with Douglas DC-8 aircraft leased from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, used for long-haul international flights to Europe and the United States. The airline's 5 millionth passenger was flown aboard a DC-3 "El Economico" service. The DC-3 remained the mainstay of domestic services as it expanded to a total of 72 points as airports were improved or opened, but most of the airline's rural air service was later stopped in May 1964. Two years later, PAL commenced its first jet services to Cebu, Bacolod, and Davao using the BAC One-Eleven, which also saw use on the service to Bali, Indonesia, starting in 1969. In addition, PAL was privatized, as the Philippine government relinquished its share in PAL after Benigno Toda Jr., then-PAL chairman, acquired a majority stake in the airline.
A year after the declaration of martial law in 1972, the re-elected Ferdinand Marcos Sr, now serving a second presidential term, issued monopolizing decrees in the form of Letters of Instruction (LOI) nos. 151 and 151-A, which were known as the "one-airline policy". PAL was the lone surviving airline, absorbing Air Manila and Filipinas Orient Airways. On March 10, 1973, PAL was re-designated as the national flag carrier. PAL continued its expansion with the arrival of its first McDonnell Douglas DC-10 on July 17, 1974, which was primarily utilized on the Manila to San Francisco route via Honolulu.
In 1975, Philippine Airlines was headquartered at the PAL Building in Makati."World Airline Directory." Flight International. March 20, 1975. 497." Retrieved on June 17, 2009. The Philippine government re-nationalized PAL in 1977, with the Government Service Insurance System holding a majority of PAL shares.
Between 1979 and 1981, PAL built a series of mammoth aviation-related facilities around the periphery of the MIA as part of a comprehensive modernization program led by then-PAL President Roman A. Cruz. These included the PAL Technical Center, the PAL Inflight Center, the PAL Data Center, and the PAL Aviation School. Within this period, PAL achieved service successes, after being the first airline to be honored by Les Chaines de Rotisseurs, an ancient order of gourmets, with an award for its inflight cuisine.
1979 saw the arrival of new aircraft types such as the Airbus A300B4 (dubbed the Love Bus) on November 30 and the Boeing 747-200B (dubbed the Jumbo Jet) on December 24. PAL's 747s gained distinction for the Cloud Nine first class cabins on their upper decks, which were configured with 14 sleeping berths, known as "Skybeds", that were certified for use during take-off and landing.
On January 4, 1980, Philippine Airlines began operating the Manila-Honolulu-San Francisco route with the Boeing 747-200B. The type completely replaced the DC-10s on transpacific services by March 3. The 747s were later adorned with the slogan "Hooray for Hollywood" to commemorate the start of a new service to Los Angeles via Honolulu on December 17.
On April 2, 1982, a PAL Boeing 747-200B arriving from San Francisco via Honolulu became the first aircraft to dock at the new 800-million peso Terminal 1 of Manila International Airport. PAL would later strengthen its cargo-handling capability by building a dedicated cargo terminal adjacent to the MIA passenger terminal and installing cargo-refrigeration equipment in 1983. The new facilities, which catered mainly to international cargo services, enabled PAL to become a fully equipped cargo handler. Services to Paris and Zürich began in November 1982. For a brief period in the 1980s, PAL's routes to San Francisco and Los Angeles had a stopover in Tokyo.
The latter half of the 1980s saw Roman Cruz's resignation to President Cory Aquino on the last day of the 1986 EDSA Revolution and the abolishment of Marcos's one-airline policy in 1988. Cruz's successor, Dante G. Santos, launched a massive fleet restructuring, which primarily focused on modernizing the domestic fleet through the acquisition of the Short 360, nicknamed The Sunriser, in May 1987, the Fokker 50 in August 1988, and the Boeing 737-300 jet in August 1989. Coinciding with the change in management was the introduction of the airline's Sunriser corporate identity designed by Landor Associates in 1986, which remains in use today.
Philippine Airlines operated the Boeing 737-300 from 1989 until 2006, utilizing the twin-engine jetliner to anchor its short-haul domestic and regional network.
On September 14, 1987, PAL undertook the biggest aircraft overhaul in its history with its first in-house 747 D-check at its technical center in Manila. The overhaul, conducted on a 747-200B (registration serial N743PR), involved reconfiguration of the aircraft's cabin and repainting with the new Sunriser livery. The airframe was airworthy by October 1987.
International services were expanded throughout the late 1980s with the opening of services to Riyadh in March 1987 and the acquisition of ex-Scandinavian Airlines Boeing 747-200s from Guinness Peat Aviation between November 1987 and September 1988 to increase service frequencies on transpacific and European routes. Expatriate pilots were temporarily hired to operate the secondhand 747s until March 1988 while the airline familiarized and trained their dedicated pilots with the new aircraft, which had significantly different parts and systems from the airlines' previous batch of 747s acquired directly from Boeing. This decision was met with accusations of unfair labor practices from the Airline Pilots Association of the Philippines (ALPAP), citing the foreign pilots receiving a higher salary than those hired by PAL.
As the Manila domestic passenger terminal outgrew its capacity and ramp aircraft parking space became more scarce, PAL leased the hangar of the Philippine Aerospace Development Corporation and converted it into the PAL Domestic Terminal 2. The terminal, which opened in October 1988, exclusively served passengers flying to destinations serviced by PAL's Airbus A300s: namely, Cebu and Davao, with General Santos and Puerto Princesa added later on. At the same time, PAL also expanded and improved the existing terminal. The opening of the new facility cleared out the old terminal and provided greater convenience to passengers.
PAL ended the 1980s and started the 1990s with evacuation flights to Manila for Filipinos stranded abroad. On June 10, 1989, A McDonnell Douglas DC-10 picked up Filipino citizens in Beijing in light of unrest brought about by the Tiananmen Square massacre. A month later on August 7, a Boeing 747-200 was sent to Damascus to rescue 196 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who had fled from Lebanon during the closing stages of the Lebanese Civil War. More evacuation flights were mounted from August 13 to September 24, 1990, using 747s to repatriate OFWs in countries affected by the Gulf War.
Re-privatization and second expansion (1992–1997)