Philippine Airlines can’t find aircraft to grow - president

Philippine Airlines is looking to acquire additional A350 and B777 widebodies to drive the post-pandemic resumption of its long-haul flights, but it is struggling to find any, according to acting president and chief operating officer Stanley Ng. He also said that the privately-owned flag carrier is open to new investors. The airline maintains a positive outlook for the year, with local demand strong and China reopening, but supply-chain woes and jostling with global carriers for aircraft and spare parts are restraining growth, he said. “If we can get more planes we can expand immediately but we can’t,” Ng told the Inquirer newspaper on May 1. “There’s a plan to finalise [new orders] but it will take two years to deliver the aircraft.” Philippine Airlines emerged from a brief and voluntary bankruptcy process 16 months ago. It cut its fleet size during the pandemic and returned a number of aircraft to lessors - including four of its six A350-900s with the range to reach New York JFK, a destination it currently flies to 4x weekly from Manila. It also currently operates nine B777-300(ER)s, the ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows, and ten A330-300s round off its widebody fleet. Getting the A350s back has been difficult, Ng said, and the soonest new aircraft can be delivered is 2025. Buying used aircraft is also not an option given the time and cost needed to reconfigure their interiors to fit the carrier’s business model. Consequently, it will not launch new long-haul routes this year. Even broken tray tables and seat recliners cannot be fixed immediately due to supply-chain bottlenecks, he said.<br/>