THE Philippines and Canada are scheduled next month to negotiate for an amended air-services agreement (ASA), flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) said.

“The RP-Canada air talks will be held sometime in May. We hope there will be more entitlements so that we can increase our flights to Canada,” said PAL president Jaime Bautista.

Under the existing ASA, PAL and the designated airline of Canada are entitled to field up to four flights per week in each direction. While Canada’s flag carrier Air Canada has yet to launch its maiden flight into the Philippines, PAL, on the other hand, has used up all of the flight entitlements awarded to the Philippine government by Canada under their first air agreement that was signed in January 1997.

Due to heavy traffic, PAL said the current entitlements are not enough to service the demand. Under the ASA between the Philippines and Canada, an entitlement is equivalent to one flight.

Bautista said PAL has long been asking for an increase in flight entitlements but the Canadian government had only provided PAL with a temporary permit is equivalent to one entitlement. When the temporary entitlement was awarded, PAL’s Manila-Vancouver flight schedule was increased to five times weekly.

“Originally, there are four entitlements only. We borrowed one from Air Canada so that makes five now. But we want to fly to Canada at least twice a day,” said Bautista.

He said the current four weekly entitlements should be increased to at least 14 in order for PAL to service this route twice daily. “We are asking for 14 weekly entitlements. I hope the RP panel can negotiate this with its counterpart in Canada,” added Bautista.

The additional entitlements can help the flag carrier mount more flights and eventually operate to the East Coast, and even possibly revive its San Diego route. “This will allow us flexibility so that we may service other destinations,” said the PAL official.

 Air Canada, meanwhile, does not have any immediate plans to use the flight entitlements allocated by the Canadian Transport Authority to mount direct flights to Manila due to the limited number of aircraft.

John Reber, corporate communications manager for Air Canada, said in June last year that the entire fleet of Air Canada services “profitable” markets but that the Philippines is not one of them.

“There is no plan at this time to operate direct to the Philippines due to limited number of aircraft. We are constantly faced with a dilemma where it does not make an economic sense to take away some of the aircraft from our current markets and redeploy them to the Philippines,” said Reber.

PAL deploys its Airbus A340 unit to mount flights to Vancouver. The airplane can transport about 264 passengers and almost all flights are full. The bulk of PAL’s flights from the Philippines to Canada is booked by overseas Filipino workers.

There are 80,000 Filipinos living in Vancouver. Bautista had said that load factor has been hitting between over 90 percent.

PAL also wants the RP air panel to seek additional entitlements in Macau. “We want to operate daily flights to Macau by making use of our Airbus A320,” Bautista said earlier.

The existing bilateral agreement between the Philippines and Macau consists of 450 weekly seat entitlements.

The flag carrier would like to be awarded at least a total of 1,050-weekly seat entitlements to be able to service daily flights to Macau.

PAL will start to mount flights to Macau on May 1. It will service the Manila-Macau route five times every week.

RP-Macau air talks took place last week. The Philippine air panel has yet to announce the results of the negotiation.

The country’s panel consists of representatives from the Department of Transportation and Communications, Civil Aeronautics Board, Department of Tourism, Department of Trade and Industry and officials from various airlines.

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FILIPINOS don’t have to be college graduates to be employed by mostly multinational firms, but they must have technical or vocational skills. 

THE Philippines has criticized the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) for its failure to assist developing countries, especially in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, to keep pace with the complexities of global economy, emphasizing that the impact of the rising food and energy prices is widening poverty in the two regions.

THE continuous increase in world oil prices has again prompted local oil companies to increase the price of diesel, gasoline and kerosene by P0.50 a liter over the weekend.

INDEPENDENT think tank IBON Foundation Inc. has remained firm in its resolve to lobby against the ratification of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa), saying the trade pact merely highlights the Arroyo government’s insensitivity to Filipino nurses and caregivers.

THE Philippines and Canada are scheduled next month to negotiate for an amended air-services agreement (ASA), flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) said.

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has launched a new unit aimed at providing solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which make up over 99 percent of the total number of enterprises in the country.