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PAL seeks alliance membership, Philippines AirAsia defers IPO
September 14th 2018
Philippine Airlines (PAL) is seeking an airline alliance membership, with talks currently underway, PAL president and COO, Jaime Bautista, has told media. Read More »
“The alliance membership will give Philippine Airlines access to more interior points in Europe and North America as well as the continents of Africa and South America where we can tap new sources of traffic,” Bautista said.
The PAL boss did not specify which of the three global airline alliances the airline would like to join. In terms of codeshares and interline agreements, PAL is most closely aligned with SkyTeam carriers.
In 2016 then Star Alliance COO (now CEO), Jeffrey Goh, said that Star Alliance was not interested in having PAL as a member carrier.
“There is no immediate need to be focusing on recruiting a member from the Philippines,” Goh said, adding that PAL had “overlapping services” with Star members and so the alliance had “to make sure” new entrants would not “cannibalize existing ones”.
In other updates from the Philippines, Philippines AirAsia CEO, Dexter Comendador, this week said the budget carrier may postpone its IPO plans to 2019.
“We’re still working on it, but it might get delayed,” the Philippines AirAsia boss told the Business Insider. “Probably next year. There are too many problems at the moment, especially fuel prices, the foreign exchange rate and the Boracay closure,” Comendador said. Philippines AirAsia had planned to collect approximately US$250 million from the listing.
AirAsia Group co-founder and CEO, Tony Fernandes, is looking to consolidate all AirAsia Group subsidiaries in a single holding company that spans the ASEAN region. “Eventually, I hope we can swap those shares into one company. So let’s say the 60% owned by Filipinos would be able to go up to AirAsia Group. So they wouldn’t just have a share of Philippines, they would have a share of the whole airline,” Fernandes said earlier this year.
Philippines AirAsia now operates 20 A320ceo from its hub at Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The airline has a secondary base at Clark International Airport.
