What’s it like to fly on Philippine Airlines in Business Class aboard an Airbus A330? Check out this 4K Trip Report & Flight Review to see if your next Philippine Airlines flight might also be a complete dumpster fire!
🚨 Note, the correct score is 53/100, the scoring card incorrectly displays 10/20 for Food & Fees score, which was meant to be 08/20. Also, as of June 2023, PR is no longer using Terminal 2 for International Flights.
🎥 In This Video:
-Manila Terminal 2 Impressions
-Manila Transit Experience
-Mabuhay Business Class Lounge
-Philippine Airlines Route Map
-A Bit of History, The Skytrax Curse
-Boarding & Full Seat Tour
-Business Class Cabin
-Spool up, Take off & Landing
-Flight Stats
-Two Full Meal Service
-Seat, IFE, Lights, Wifi Malfunction
-Unacceptable Service
-Arrival into Sydney (Beautiful!)
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💰 Flight Fare
Fare Paid: $568.30 USD (KUL-MNL-SYD)
Class: Busines Class
Inclusions: Seat Selection, 40kg Check in Baggage, 7kg Carry on (not enforced)
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↪ Video Chapters ↩
0:00 Intro
00:26 Boarding Pass Flight Info
00:57 The Manila Transit Experience
01:25 Terminal 2 Airside
02:02 Mabuhay Lounge Tour
02:55 Philippine Airlines Route Map
03:48 Busy Terminal, Boarding Begins Soon
04:18 Our A330 & Flight Stats
05:03 Stepping On Board
05:20 Cabin First Impressions & Layout Graphic
05:56 Full Business Class Seat Tour
08:07 Preflight Service
08:17 Safety Video & Push Back
08:35 Malfunctioning Light & Taxi
09:23 Spool up & Take off
10:16 Our Route to Sydney
10:26 In Flight Comforts
10:58 Malfunctioning In Flight Entertainment
11:20 Malfunctioning In Flight Wifi
11:35 Dinner Service Begins, Full Menu
11:46 Full Dinner Meal Service (nearly inedible)
12:53 Bathroom Amenities
13:04 Problems with Purser & Service & Seat with No Power
13:30 Seat in Full Flat Mode
14:26 Breakfast Meal Service
15:14 Incredible Approach into Sydney
16:00 Landing & Taxi to Gate, Aircraft Spotting
16:54 Deplaning & Arrivals
17:26 The Flip Flop Score
Music featured in this video is licensed under an Artlist Unlimited License.
This is NOT a promotional video. I pay for all of my flights and hotels (and I always tell you how much!) so I can be as honest and impartial as possible. I do not receive any special treatment that wouldn’t otherwise be publicly accessible, in fact, the hotels and airlines have no idea about my visit and that’s the way I like it!
#philippineairlines #businessclass #tripreport
34 Comments
❇❇❇ Since the time that I recorded and finished this video, Philippine Airlines has moved their international operations to Terminal 1. Feel free to comment about… anything else 😅
The best part of your videos are you don’t relish having to criticise a subject matter. Rather you objectively point out the problems and hope they can be resolved. Very informative and genuinely good natured. Although gamey ham sounds terrifying 😮
Philippines airlines shinng through..
A rubbery chicken adobo for business class?? I wonder what they serve in economy 😬
I hope you wrote PAL a formal letter of complaint or feedback on the purser. Sad to hear so many horror and not so good stories about PAL these days.
🤣 almsot pulled the trigger on their biz class cuz it was cheap. Now I'm glad I didn't. Thanks for saving me from eating gamey ham and instant rice.
Oh! You still missed flying our national pride Qantas! Try flying International in Economy and see if you can beat your lowest Flip Flop score! 😮 Excellent video as always! Please keep them coming!
wow sorry to hear about this experience. how often do you send feedback to airlines after a positive or negative experience? and if you do, do they respond?
I enjoyed this video. I am interested in taking this flight on the KUl-MNL-SYD route. How do I find this business class fare at this very attractive price !! Many thanks
"Just forget it !!!"
I’m at a loss to understand the lack of customer care and especially the complete indifference from the “Purser”
An apology at the very least as well as some form of compensation in the way of .. hmmm anything – the food indeed looked vile and I’m so sorry that you experienced that crap – I haven’t travelled with them since their 747 days and oddly from Sydney on a flight that seriously did not have one female passenger on it!!!! Ah the wonderment of what that said.
you need to report this lazy ass purser to higher management…
I will never fly PR even if the fare is low.
Thanks for sharing.
I certainly won't be flying with them
As a Filipino, I totally agree on this. PR is not worth my money anymore, let alone flying business class with them. I could fly with other foreign airline with the same price but definitely better service.
Domestic flts are not worth it. They give you green peas and a small glass of water for 9k php.
Flip is a racist term for Filipino! Watch your language!
Before dvo-mnl /vv is cateered by a330 regularly but now 321 or 320.
Saran wrap it. The pre checker for PA in Vancouver in March 2021 lost his temper on me before I could ever speak. Wasn't a Filipino but most passenger were and not one did stand up
CHEF JP should take a real look at THIS video report!
is this the same aircraft used in Manila-Dubai flights?
Trivial issues
they keep adding terminals in Manila with no consideration on how to change between them in a realistic way.
Thanks for the trip report, I'm Filipino and when I'm heading home have always been wanting to give their J product a try but multiple reviews show alot of inconsistencies that I will stick to SQ for now
I traveled to Philippines for the first time in the 'ber' months which is a long busy period and was pleasantly treated to their amazing A321neo product. But when I visited the second time around the Easter holidays, I was given a thrashing of their sad A320ceo product. LCC seat pitch in economy is unacceptable for my height, and I had to dish out money just to seat in their premium economy seat which is basically the same but with better legroom. Flying PAL is like gambling your luck.
I am Filipino and si used to fly Philippine Airlines business class and about 8 years ago it was so horrible when they had a strike and change of ownership I refused to fly them anymore. No matter what. There is always something wrong. The problem with them is that they are a company who cannot sustain what they commit to do, and yes the laziest pursers I’ve ever seen. JAL and ANA run circles around PAL. Doesn’t matter if they get new A350, there is no pride in ownership. Sad.
Philippines Airline us terrible. But they go direct to Manila from many cities..
RANTER
Kevin you have by far the best videos on travel. Monday I booked a $230 JFK-CDG airfare on American. I’m then going from Paris to Barcelona to Rome to Florence(by train) and back to Paris. I tried to find some videos of the exact flights and airlines but those videos were worse than something I would do. I’d rather watch one of your reviews on an EasyJet, Ryanair or Vueling flight to anywhere than one of those other videos.
I sure hope you were reimbursed some money from that disaster flight. I would have lost it for sure just from that light coming on.
I used to work with pursers like that. It was the most infuriating for those of us who actually wanted to do a good job.
PAL is always a hit or miss in my experience. Last time I flew PAL BC from LAX to MNL was August 2022. BC configuration was 2 3 2. Terrible configuration. Boarding in LAX was a complete chaos with no separate boarding for BC passengers. IFE wasn’t working and food was mediocre. BC hard and soft product is not worth the money.
That was one very honest flight review.
The action of a single purser on a flight should typically not reflect the entire team of an airline, however such action of a single purser reflects the entire team that are trying to show how Philippine Airlines hospitality really is. I personally had a bad experience a while back but not at this level that degrade the flight experience of a premium paying passenger. Everyone knows PR is currently on a reorganizational status and it needs all the help of all employees to achieve it. I hope that the public relations team reach out to this passenger and rectify the bad experience he had on this specific flight. I wouldn't say that I'm embarrassed, but I admit that I'm disappointed and hopefully everything will be back to its glorious status of the Philippine flag carrier.
Coming from a Filipino, you should've paid economy for that experience. That was not a business class experience at all. My economy class experience in 2019 with them looks much better than what you had (minus the seat of course).
At the same time, I also think you should also give them a little more patience. PAL is one of those airlines that hasn't had a break until like maybe 2014-2016. This was the time when they had consistent profits, though not that big but modest.
To give you some context, Asian Financial Crisis really affected the airline. They've been stagnant since late 2000s. They were gonna improve by upgrading to the 777-300ER and expand to the US but just as they do, the Philippines gets downgraded by the FAA to Cat 2, preventing them from expanding. The current owner then sold the airline to San Miguel, who had big plans to turn PAL into a… budget carrier. He basically said he wanted to compete with Cebu Pacific. In my mind, that was a bruh moment. Then he orders planes, particularly A320s and A330s, from Airbus, but then the FAA returns us to Cat 1, and did you know the A330s doesn't have the range to fly to the US. Bruh moment 2. They buy second hand A340s to supplement US expansion. I believe we opened the New York route with A340s. But yeah, buying secondhand A340s. Bruh moment 3. The current owner eventually bought back PAL from San Miguel and had this push to make it a leading airline, the 4-star Skytrax was part of it. They made the push to buy A350s. You mentioned the quality was starting to worsen around 2019, that was no coincidence. They got the hot seat from the former president to pay the missed taxes, but instead of staggered payment, it was straight full. That was around 2018. The financials of PAL hasn't looked rosy since 2016. They missed a lot of income when we hosted ASEAN (I believe we hosted it twice) and the one in 2016 was like nearing peak season. Covid was what did them. So yeah, they haven't had a break.
I'm really hoping the record profits (which you may point as a sign of greed, but I've never recalled them getting these kinds of profits in a really long time) will lead to a return to better service or improvements and this downgrade is only temporary.
Other than that, that Business class experience sucked hands down. The least they could do was let you move seats.