PAL flies to Shanghai Oct. 28

Philippine Airlines will start a long-planned regular service between Manila and Shanghai on October 28, 2001, giving the flag carrier a direct link to China’s largest city and a second gateway to one of the world’s most dynamic tourist markets.

Shanghai will be one of three new Asia-Pacific destinations – Bangkok and Melbourne are the other two – PAL will launch flights to in the last week of October.

The airline is forging ahead with its modest network expansion, which was programmed long before the current global crisis in the aviation industry, on the back of confidence in the mainstream and niche markets it intends to serve.

The addition of the three new points swells the PAL international network to 20 points in 13 countries and territories.

The service to Shanghai will operate five times a week, with departures from Manila (PR 336) every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 12:15 p.m. Arrival at Pudong International Airport is at 3:50 p.m.

The return service, PR 337, departs Shanghai on the same days at 4:50 p.m. and arrives in Manila at 8:20 p.m.

PAL will deploy Boeing 737-400 aircraft on the route. The narrow-bodied jet seats 168 passengers in a monoclass layout.

Shanghai is PAL’s second destination in China. The carrier already operates a four-times-weekly service to Xiamen in southern Fujian province.

More importantly, as China’s financial and commercial hub, Shanghai is well placed to provide PAL better access to a burgeoning tourist market.

The World Tourism Organization estimates that the number of Chinese traveling overseas will soar from the current 10 million a year to 50 million by 2010, and to 100 million by 2020. This will make China the leading source of tourists worldwide.

The Philippines has yet to take advantage of this booming traffic. In the first seven months of 2001, the country welcomed only 10,605 visitors from China (compared to 267,831 from the top-ranked United States), indicating immense potential for expansion.

PAL will aim to accelerate that traffic stream, and in the process inject a much-needed boost to the Philippine economy.

Shanghai is also emerging as an alternative to Hong Kong for Filipino merchants and retailers who ply a brisk trade shopping for merchandise abroad and then reselling them locally.

At the upper end of the business scale, there is likewise potentially huge executive traffic between Manila and Shanghai, particularly with the latter’s rise as Asia’s newest financial powerhouse.

Just one week before PAL’s inaugural flight, the eastern port city will host the annual summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, further underscoring its status as an important regional center.

This will actually mark PAL’s return to Shanghai after a gap of 52 years. The flag carrier first flew there via Hong Kong on September 5, 1946, making the two Chinese cities PAL’s pioneer overseas destinations. The service was terminated in October 1949.