philippine airlines

Flight Review: Philippine Airlines NEW Airbus A330 Business Class (Refurbished Tri-Class)

March 31, 2019 by Bino 11 Comments

In 2017, Philippine Airlines completed the refurbishment of 8 single-class Airbus A330s and fitted these with a 309-seater tri-class configuration. While the planes came from the airline’s existing fleet (the single-class equipment used to ply certain domestic routes), the new cabins came with the international destinations in mind. This marked the start of the most recent phase of PAL’s “seat modernization” which as of this writing also include A350s, A321neos and even refurbished 777-300ER. Prior to this, the older Philippine Airlines A330 business class seats were rather unremarkable. I had written in a previous review that the older seats looked like hospital beds due to the color scheme chosen. They were designed earlier in the decade when PAL was trying to compete head-on with budget carriers.

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Flight Review: Philippine Airlines Business Class A330-300 – Delayed & Dirty Seat

March 21, 2018 by Bino 4 Comments

I have in the past year been flying with Philippine Airlines with increasing frequency. After encountering a spate of delays (6 out of the last 6 PAL flights I took were delayed by at least an hour), I decided that I’ve had enough.

However, I found out sometime late last year that Philippine Airlines was rolling out its new tri-class A330-300 on the MNL to SIN route. These planes were recently refurbished with fully-flat business class seats with a 1-2-1 configuration. Finally, I thought; PAL now has a decent business class seat (though I thought PAL’s 777-300ER business class was not too bad). This led me to make a J class redemption on one of the A330 flights.

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Flight Review: Philippine Airlines Business Class on the Boeing 777-300ER

July 30, 2017 by Bino 7 Comments

It has been around 8 years since Philippine Airlines obtained its very first Boeing 777-300ER which marked the beginning of the carrier’s modernization where widebodies were concerned. While most airlines were already looking at fully flat seats and challenging what was then being offered in First Class and tailoring those for Business Class, the 777-300ER marked PAL’s first foray into the angle-flat seats. While by no means at the cutting edge; at the very least, it marked a slow transition out of the bulky and archaic recliner seats that the airline offered for the entirety of its Business Class products up until that point in time.

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