What, if anything, is Philippine Airlines planning?

This morning, at the Farnborough Airshow, Philippine Airlines ended a two-decade gap in its Boeing order book when it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for up to twenty 787-10 Dreamliners. This is the airline’s first Boeing order since 2007 and it opens up an interesting question.

The order

Philippine Airlines (PAL) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Boeing for 15 787-10s, with the option to purchase 5 more and the airline says that it expects deliveries to start in 2031 and with the final aircraft being delivered in 2034.

The announcement was made by Lucio C. Tan III, President and Chief Operating Officer of PAL Holdings, and Richard Nuttall, President of Philippine Airlines, alongside Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Stephanie Pope and Brad McMullen, Boeing’s Senior Vice President of Commercial Sales and Marketing.

Tan framed the deal around the airline’s 85th anniversary and 80 years of partnership with Boeing.

Thoughts

Here at TFM, we don’t normally cover airline orders because, unless it’s a new aircraft type that has only just been fully certified, or unless the order means that we’re getting a shiny new premium cabin, the news isn’t hugely interesting (admittedly, that’s subjective).

This order, however, is interesting because it’s unclear how PAL plans to use the aircraft once they’re delivered.

Per Planespotters.net, this is what the airline’s long-haul fleet looks like right now (including parked aircraft):

• Airbus A330 – 11 (2 parked)
• Airbus A350-900 – 2
• Airbus A350-1000 – 2
• Boeing 777-300ER – 10 (1 parked)

So on the long-haul side, that gives a total of 25 aircraft.

On top of this, we know that there are seven more A350-1000 aircraft on the way (coming this year and next) as part of a $3 billion order that PAL placed with Airbus in 2023 (two of the A350-1000s from that order have already been delivered).

We also know that these A350-1000 aircraft are part of a fleet modernization program with PAL wishing to retire some of its older 777 and A330 aircraft.

So where do the 787-10s fit in?

Once the A350-1000s have been integrated into the fleet, it doesn’t look like PAL will have many ageing aircraft to replace (based on Planespotters.net, its fleet doesn’t look particularly old right now!), so is this Boeing order part of an expansion plan that we don’t yet know about?

An expansion plan is plausible given that PAL is joining the Oneworld alliance* so if this turns out to be the case (I’m speculating, clearly), it’s genuinely exciting and it leaves me wondering what new routes PAL may start.

The 787-10 doesn’t have a particularly impressive range and even though today’s Boeing press release claims it can fly up to 7,500 nautical miles (13,890 km) that’s not a figure the aircraft actually delivers.

The real-world distance that we usually expect out of a 787-10 (with a typical two-class load of 330 passengers) is closer to 6,430 nautical miles (11,910 km), and that rules out most North American cities (North America is where PAL’s new A350s appear to be heading), but it leaves open the possibility of routes to Europe.

Istanbul (~4,930 nautical miles) and Athens (~5,150 nautical miles) are well within the aircraft’s reach, and with planning (passenger/cargo weight and seasonal headwinds) the 787-10 should be able to fly from Manila to cities like Munich, Frankfurt, Rome, and Paris.

Given the right aircraft configuration (not too many passengers or too much cargo), the 787-10 could probably even make it as far as London (but that would require a lot of point-to-point demand and I don’t know if that’s there).

Europe looks like a real possibility to me because, while PAL currently serves multiple cities in Asia, multiple cities in North America and multiple cities in Australia, it doesn’t serve a single city in Europe, and there’s a lot of demand for Europe – Southeast Asia travel.

Sure, PAL codeshares on Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines flights that get passengers to Europe. But the Qatar flights require a connection in Doha, and we don’t know if the Singapore Airlines codeshare will survive once PAL joins Oneworld. So the idea of PAL launching at least one new route to Europe with its 787-10s isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

For Oneworld flyers that would be great, as another option between Europe and SE Asia would be very nice to have.

*This Boeing order comes approximately six weeks after PAL signed an MoU to become the 16th member of the Oneworld alliance and just the second full member based in Southeast Asia (Malaysia Airlines being the other).

Bottom line

PAL has signed a memorandum of understanding for 15 aircraft that will begin to be delivered in 2031, but I’m not sure that the airline’s plans for the ordered aircraft are.

Often, the explanation for a widebody order is that an airline is replacing older aircraft in its fleet, but that explanation doesn’t necessarily hold up here. By the time the A350-1000s are all in place next year, PAL will have a reasonably modern long-haul fleet and nothing urgent to retire. Even by 2031 the aircraft in PAL’s fleet will still be relatively young and not in desperate need of replacement.

So either PAL is planning to retire some aircraft that will still have life in them when the 787-10s arrive, or the airline is considering a few new routes that it hasn’t told us about.

I’m hoping that the latter is true and if it is, I’m going to guess that a city in Europe will be the first to get a new route from PAL.

Either way, it’s a long wait to find out. Deliveries of the 787-10s start in 2031 and aircraft delivery dates have a habit of slipping, so we’re probably not going to know one way or the other this side of 2030.

What do you think the plan is for the 787-10s? And what would you like the plan to be?