Philippine Airlines (PAL) is looking at increasing flights to the United States, particularly to New York, once the first of its Airbus A350-1000s arrive.

“We’re still working on the final delivery date, but it will be either December or January. But we’re still waiting for the final delivery date,” said PAL President Richard Nuttall on the sidelines of the Philippine Aviation Summit.

He said the first batch of planes will be used for flights to New York, and they are studying whether to use these to add more flights to the US since “longer term, we will expand to the US as demand requires.”

Nuttall said they will end the year with about 83 aircraft, four more than last year. Meanwhile, they expect to receive five Airbus A350-1000s in 2026.

PAL has been considering flights to other North American destinations such as Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston, and PAL Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Carlos Luis D. Fernandez said, “We're in the process of evaluating all of those at the moment.

“We don't have the aircraft to mount additional flights in other destinations in the US, but obviously, as aircraft come in, then that's the time that we will make decisions. So we're still in that process.”

Meanwhile, Nuttall said PAL currently does not have any plan to fly to Europe since “you've got a huge Philippine diaspora in the US, and they cover all walks of life. And if you look at the geography, there are not many airlines located between here and the US, because you've got the Pacific Ocean.”

“But if you look at between here and Europe, there are a million people that fly. The diaspora in Europe is spread out. A lot of it is doing the kind of jobs where they're very, very price sensitive, so they're going to look at what's the cheapest connecting route rather than going non-stop.

“So flying a brand new aircraft to Europe is a really, really risky venture, so I think at the moment, as the new capacity comes in, we'll be focusing on going east to North America,” he explained.