Philippine Airlines picks Airbus for fleet maintenance

MANILA, Philippines — Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) has chosen the Airbus Flight Hour Services (FHS) solution for the maintenance of its upcoming fleet of Airbus A350-900s to be used for long-haul destinations.

In a statement, Airbus said it signed the FHS-components maintenance contract with PAL for the latter’s six A350-900s.

Under the contract, Airbus will be responsible for the component services, repair, warehousing and transportation for PAL, through the support of Airbus FHS pools in Hong Kong.

The Airbus FHS, through Airbus’ data platform Skywise, will utilize state-of-the-art data hosting and analytics to optimize the airline fleet utilization.

By tapping Airbus’ service, PAL stands to benefit in terms of improved operations through reduced delays as it would be able to predict in-service issues.

PAL earlier said it expects to take delivery of four A350-900s this year, with the first to arrive in June.

The first A350-900 will be deployed on the non-stop Manila to New York service.

By next year, two more A350-900s will join PAL’s fleet.

Apart from four A350-900s this year, PAL expects the delivery of five additional next-generation Bombardier Q400s and six new Airbus A321neos.

PAL currently has a fleet of 85 aircraft.

PAL president Jaime Bautista earlier said the carrier plans to increase its fleet further to 100 aircraft by 2020.

“We are aiming for 100 aircraft by 2020, which places us in the category of a major carrier.  But we are not merely adding more planes, we are constantly upgrading the cabins, seats, amenities, inflight entertainment and technology,” he said.

PAL’s move to modernize its fleet is in line with its goal of achieving a five-star rating by 2020.

Last February, PAL became a certified four-star global airline following the audit conducted by international air transport rating organization Skytrax.