Qatar Airways hops on PAL’s Manila-Doha flights

MANILA, Philippines — Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) has struck a fresh partnership with Qatar Airways, one of the world’s best airlines, to increase flight options in the Manila-Doha corridor.

PAL said it has forged a strategic tieup with Qatar Airways for a codeshare service in its Manila connections to Doha and vice versa.

PAL will upgrade its non-stop flights between Manila and Doha to a daily basis starting June 16, and Qatar Airways will codeshare on this in the first phase of the partnership.

The agreement means Qatar Airways would add the PAL service to its flight network. With this, passengers of both airlines can expect ease of transfer and wider options when flying with either PAL or Qatar Airways.

For passengers headed to Doha, they may access Qatar Airways’ international coverage of more than 170 routes in Africa, Americas, Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East. They will enjoy the comfort of transferring through the Hamad International Airport, voted by Skytrax as one of the world’s best gateways.

Passengers traveling to Manila may also maximize PAL’s domestic network if they want to visit tourist destinations here like Boracay, Cebu, Davao and Puerto Princesa.

PAL president and chief operating officer Stanley Ng said the airline is expanding Doha flights to a daily frequency on optimism it would sell well with Qatar Airways helping market it.

“Our decision to offer a daily frequency to Doha is enabled by our exciting strategic partnership with Qatar Airways, and it will help us stimulate tourism, trade flows and business growth in the context of the strong bilateral relationship between the Philippines and Qatar,” Ng said.

He added that overseas Filipino workers up for deployment can use the daily service to Doha to reach the Middle East. Based on records from the Philippine Statistics Authority, Qatar is the fifth largest country for OFWs as of 2023.

Qatar Airways chief commercial officer Thierry Antinori said the codeshare with PAL is just the beginning of a bigger partnership between the two airlines. In the future, they plan to share more destinations and intertwine their miles programs.

Based on PAL’s schedule starting June 16, the flight to Doha will leave at 6:50 p.m. and arrive at 11:40 p.m. (local time), while the return to Manila will depart at 1:30 a.m. and land at 4:15 p.m. (local time).

PAL will deploy an Airbus A330-300 in a two-class configuration for the flight, with 18 seats in business class and 341 seats in the economy cabin.