Yesterday, Alaska Airlines announced that it has added Philippine Airlines as its 32nd air partner. Alaskaair.com will soon start selling nonstop flights from Honolulu and the West Coast to Manila, and the ability to earn and redeem Mileage Plan miles on Philippine Airlines flights will follow shortly as well.
This could be a very useful addition to Alaska’s partner network, as Philippine flies nonstop to Manila from Honolulu, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as from Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.
The News
- Philippine Airlines has become Alaska Airlines’ 32nd air travel partner
- Mileage Plan members will soon be able to both earn and redeem their Alaska miles on Philippine flights.
Quick Thoughts
I’m excited to see this partnership happen, for variety of reasons.
First, it’s great to see that Alaska is continuing to expand it’s partner network outside of the oneworld Alliance. One of the fun things about Mileage Plan pre-oneworld was that it had an eclectic mix of partners that created some very unique redemption opportunities around the world. There was some question as to whether that would continue now that it’s a oneworld partner and is merging with Hawaiian, but it looks like one-off partnerships are still on the Mileage Plan menu.
As far as I’m concerned, there can never be too many nonstop options from the US to Asia, and Philippine not only has some attractive routes from the US, but also some well-placed regional options as well:
We would expect that Alaska will slide Philippine into its existing Asia chart, which is competitive with other programs like United and Aeroplan:
Every West Coast airport with the exception of Los Angeles falls into the 5000-7000 mile range, meaning business class will start at 75K one-way, with economy half that. What could be more enticing for many folks is that 85K would get you to the Philippines and beyond to a large swath of its connecting routes throughout Southeast and East Asia…with a free stopover in Manila at no extra cost. I can taste the Adobo already.
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I’m Filipino and I stay clear of PAL whenever I fly to the Philippines. Besides a bad hard product, I witnessed on multiple occasions discriminatory attitude by the FA towards fellow Filipinos, especially if you look poor. These Filipino FAs look down on these people. I saw one time a older lady asked for the whole can of drink and the FA commented “you better finished that” in Tagalog in a very condescending tone. Another one on a different flight, an older male try to get the attention of a passing FA and the FA dismissively told him “to wait” in tagalog. I noticed because these FA attendants are all smiles and helpful to non-Filipinos and Filipinos that looks like they have money.
PR flights to MNL on 777s are 2-3-2 business class config. A deal breaker for me. UA and ANA fly into Terminal 3 and you can walk to many hotels in Newport area using the Runway Manila pedestrian overpass.
We typically make a trip to the Phillipines almost yearly – our preferred route is UA SFO-MNL on the Polaris red-eye arriving 7AM in MNL its the easiset way to deal with time zone difference from PNW we’ve found.
China Air J (Flying Blue) also a red-eye is excellent P2 flew this in March arriving 10AM – the EVA Air Orchid (J) is supposed to be nice – we had it booked but pivoted when UA launced the SFO-MNL direct route and flew Polaris.
Taking a hot shower in POLARIS lounge before boarding makes for a restful flight – we also get free internet on UA thru T-mo.
That said we only fly PAL in Pinas when its the only option of last resort we love Cebu-Pac Airlines –
PALs FA are amazing- ny wife loves the food – but the hard product has tons of DP on broken seats and IFE the are never fixed. The seating layout also leaves alot to be desired.
The Philippines has PWD (persons with disabilities) as well as seniors who all get priority (with the whole family) our last United Flight was probably 50% Asian Pax (my wife is) but I counted 78 wheelchairs on the SFO-MNL flight. I haven’t flown PAL Int’l since the 90s.
While its an option – I would rather spend 75J AS on a different airline partner of similar flight time. This is just me.
Our last PAL flight (2023) it also had a connection (3 hrs) and they didn’t load our bags for our connecting flight so we had to drive 2 hours round trip nad wasted 5 hours to get our delayed luggage.
When I lived in the Philippines in the 80s-90s PAL was the only domestic airline – but even all the domestic competition has done little to make the airline much better or even try to improve they do have a monopoly on certain routes – but most of thier flight connect thru MNL.
That said if they had a sale for 45K AS for Biz seat I might gamble. But UA/EVA/China Air Business have superior soft_hard products and mutliple paths for booking with flexible CC points.
Will Alaska have full surcharges on these? I remember when ANA still offered Philippines Air awards the full charges were so high only business made any sense.
always nice to have another option! thanks for the heads up!
AS announcement says this is only for flights from the West Coast. I assume they didn’t say that accidentally and that Toronto and JFK flights aren’t part of the deal.
I read that as saying they would only be selling West Coast flights on Alaska air.com (which makes sense given Alaska’s route network).
I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t earn and redeem miles on the JFK and Toronto routes.
“We would expect that Alaska will slide Philippine into its existing Asia chart, which is competitive with other airlines and with Philippines Star Alliance partners like United and Aeroplan:”
That makes it sound like Philippine Airlines is in the Star Alliance, and of course it is not.
You’re right, fixed.
More choices are certainly better. A commenter on another blog said that Philippine does 7 across businesses class. I checked on Aerolopa and the 77W does have that so it might be prudent to check the configuration before booking.