Alberto Riva Alberto runs our flight reviews and oversees special projects across several verticals. Previously, he was the managing editor of Vice News and worked at Bloomberg and CNN, where he was constantly trying to convince people to do more stories about airplanes. He speaks Italian, French and Spanish and one day he’ll be better at German.
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[tpg_rating tpg-rating-score=83 ground-experience=5 cabin-seat=21 amens-ife=12 food-bev=22 service=23 pros=Very good seat, service and food; free and stable Wi-Fi; a brand-new Airbus A350. cons=The dated Manila lounge and airport do not match the onboard experience; the airline has no US points and miles partners. /]
Review: Philippine Airlines Business Class Manila Jfk
Not long ago, an 8, 519-mile nonstop flight would have easily taken the crown for longest in the world. These days, the Philippine Airlines service from Manila to New York merely ranks as the eighth-longest nonstop. No. 1 is the unbeatable (with current technology) Singapore-Newark monster flown by Singapore Airlines on the ultralong-range version of the Airbus A350. But the Manila service, introduced in October, still earns the respectable title of longest flight into JFK. It's flown by a standard A350 sporting a business class with all seats offering aisle access — the latest-model long-haul jet, with the latest-model biz seat. That was enough for us at
To want to try it out, so we booked it as the return leg of a trip to Southeast Asia from New York in early December, from Jakarta, Indonesia, to New York via Manila.
Philippine Airlines' Mabuhay Miles loyalty program does not have US transfer partners, nor does it have airline partners in the US — it only partners with All Nippon Airways and Etihad. Our only option was paying with cash. We put the $2, 773.83 fare on the Platinum Card® from American Express, earning 5x points on airfare booked directly with the airline for a total haul of 13, 870 Membership Rewards points, worth $277 at current TPG valuations.
Philippines Airlines Business Class
I opened a Mabuhay account for this flight, and I'm now at 15, 357 miles. With 50, 000 more, I'll have enough for a one-way award ticket in the same class and on the same flight, per the Mabuhay award chart.
After arriving the previous day on a gleaming Airbus A321neo from Jakarta and overnighting in Manila, I was well-disposed toward the flag carrier of the Philippines. The A321 was a brand-new machine, just four months old, sporting lie-flat beds in business class — the same seat and 2-2 layout American Airlines flies on its coast-to-coast A321s in biz. On the three-hour hop from Indonesia, I had been treated and fed very nicely.
Unfortunately, Terminal 2 at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) was a letdown from that, and not a good introduction for the ultralong-haul flight to follow.
Airline Review: Philippine Airlines Business Class, Sydney To Manila
I arrived before 6pm for a 9pm departure. Check-in lines were uncrowded but slow. Narrow, dim spaces, with storefronts and gates close together, and chipped white and gray tiles on the floor did not create a pleasant feeling.
To my surprise, my boarding pass carried the dreaded SSSS code. This was my first experience with Special Secondary Security Screening, an extra inspection reserved for people flagged as suspicious. I may have been singled out because I was on a one-way ticket, despite being enrolled in the US Trusted Traveler Program.
That SSSS turned out to be just a mild annoyance. At the first security screening, after check-in, the agents all but ignored it. At the second, positioned at the entrance to the gates for US-bound flights, I got pulled aside for a few questions — how long I'd stayed in the country, where I came from, the purpose of my visit — and an extra close look at my bags. Total time lost: maybe four minutes. (Our readers have had varying experiences with it.)
Lufthansa Airbus A350 „münchen“
Before that, an hour spent in the Mabuhay lounge did not measure up to the ambitions of the airline that ran it. Essentially windowless, it smelled of humidity and stuffy air. The tiny bathroom was not adequate for the capacity of the lounge. Air conditioning was either too low or, if you were sitting near the vents, freezing. Many pieces of furniture were scuffed or dented.
At least it was easy to plug in and charge devices. Outlets were plentiful, and no adapter is required in the Philippines for US electronics. The Wi-Fi was really fast, with a blazing 80 Mbps download speed but an unfortunate tendency to disconnect.
Had ever seen, not by a long shot, but if Philippine Airlines wants to make the ground experience as top-notch as its new Airbus jets, it needs to fix this.
In Business Class From The Philippines To Europe From Just $ 1,525 (round Trip)
At the gate, after going through my anticlimactic SSSS screening, I found a lot of unoccupied seats — the flight turned out to be near-empty — and poor signage, leaving it a bit unclear where the JFK passengers would board from. Flight PR126 to New York and the airline's other nonstops to Los Angeles and San Francisco departed from the same cluster of gates at roughly the same time, leading to some confusion. Boarding began 25 minutes after the scheduled 8:15pm time. Seven passengers in wheelchairs, an unusually high number, were accompanied aboard ahead of everybody else.
At 8:40pm, I walked onto a shiny A350-900, welcomed by the cheeky raccoon mask around the cockpit windows and unmistakable sloping nose of all A350s. Its Filipino registration, RP-C-3501, identified it as the first to be delivered of the six A350s ordered by the airline. It had left the factory in Toulouse only in June — just six months old.
Business class on the Philippine Airlines A350 is all in a single cabin of 30 seats, with four per row laid out 1-2-1, and it makes an excellent first impression — elegant and understated, if maybe a touch cold. Its Thompson Vantage XL seats are the same we have flown, and liked very much, on airlines including Scandinavian Airlines and Rwandair.
Philippine Airlines Is Certified As A 4 Star Airline
Note the car-style, over-the-shoulder seat belt. Also note that the window seats come in two variants. One has a huge armrest between seat and aisle, enhancing privacy; you'll find it in odd-numbered rows. The other has the armrest on the window side, leaving you more exposed to aisle traffic and making it harder to see out the window. So, if you're traveling solo, try to select seats A and K in rows 3, 5 and 7. Below is my seat, 7A, which made for a delightfully cozy little fort over the 15 hours I would spend in it.
Window seats in even-numbered rows aren't bad at all, but you're just an inch away from the aisle. Those are seats A and K in rows 2, 4, 6 and 8.
Pick the center blocks of two, seats D and G, if you're traveling as a couple. D has the armrest on the aisle side and G is the more exposed one.
Philippine Airlines' Business Class, Wireless Ife And Wi Fi
Regardless of where it is, every seat turns into a 78-inch flat bed. In the up position, there's all the legroom you want.
The Vantage XL is great for open storage of small objects; the ledge to my right held phone, chargers, headphones, books and assorted knick-knacks. There's no closed storage, though, and no place to put larger objects like a laptop.
Everything I needed to charge my devices and control the seat and monitor was clustered to my right: wired remote, headphone outlet with USB powered port, universal power outlet, an orientable reading light with three settings and a very intuitive control pad for the seat, mood light and massage function. The mood light is a great touch, illuminating the storage area and footwell; no more frantic feeling around on the floor for dropped objects. Turn on the mood light and voilà , you can see easily where your phone or wallet fell. As for the massage function, it's really more of a gimmick. Just get up and stretch instead — the 1-2-1 layout makes it easy. You're not disturbing anyone.
Flight Diary: How Philippine Airlines Left Me High And Dry
A subset of the seat controls is replicated on the armrest and easily accessible from the flat-bed position. Next to it, a button extends smoothly a tray table big enough to work on a laptop comfortably.
Short of a mini-suite with a door like the new Delta One, Qatar's award-winning QSuites or the single seat on JetBlue's Mint, this is about as private as it gets in business class.
Philippine Airlines also opted for no overhead luggage bins over the center row in biz class, which creates a feeling of spaciousness.
Mabuhay Business Class
On this flight, there were Filipino newspapers and the international edition of the New York Times in a pouch at the back of the biz cabin.
Philippine Airlines configures its A350s with 295 seats spread across business, premium economy and coach -- a relatively low number. Besides the 30 flat beds in biz, there are 24 seats in premium economy in three rows of
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