Philippine Airlines, the flagship air carrier of the island nation in the South Pacific, will inaugurate one-stop service to Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport in March.
Las Vegas officials say it will help broaden the tourism market to another corner of the globe.
The company made no formal announcement of its plans, but said in a release on its Internet site that it would route flights from Manila through Vancouver, British Columbia, beginning March 16.
Travel experts said the routing could become the easiest means for a traveler from the Philippines to get to Las Vegas and back, since other routes would require a change of planes, or, through code-share partnerships, a change of airlines.
The most direct route from Manila to Las Vegas today is on Japan Airlines, which offers one-stop, change-of-planes service via Tokyo.
Several other airlines offer flights by way of Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas or Houston, but require transferring to a different air carrier.
Pilar Lanza Camps, who has worked as a travel agent at Prestige Travel in Las Vegas for four years but still calls the Philippines home, said the new route would be warmly embraced by Filipinos, who have great loyalty to the nation's flagship air carrier.
"For me, it's really an exciting thing, this is long-awaited," said Camps, who grew up in Bacolod City and went to school in Manila. "Las Vegas has a growing Filipino population. I've talked to a lot of them and they think going through Vancouver will be no big deal."
She said the one-stop, one-plane service would be considerably more convenient than the alternatives. She said on many of her previous trips to Las Vegas from her former home, she had to claim three suitcases at Los Angeles International Airport and recheck them on an America West flight for the last leg of her trip to Las Vegas.
Brand loyalty didn't save Singapore Airlines' short-lived service between Singapore and Las Vegas by way of Hong Kong. The Singapore carrier withdrew from the route less than a year after starting it in mid-2002, with disappointing loads blamed on fears of war with Iraq and the outbreak of the SARS virus.
When Philippines Airlines begins the Vancouver route, it will use a four-engine Airbus A340-300 jumbo jet with 264 seats configured in three classes. Initially, the airline plans to operate the service four times a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Harry Kassap, manager of air service development at McCarran, said the airport has been negotiating with Philippines "for some time" and was allowing the airline to make the announcement of its service plans.
Kassap said through bilateral agreements between the Philippines, the United States and Canada, the airline will be given "local traffic rights," meaning the carrier can transport passengers from Vancouver to Las Vegas in competition with Alaska Airlines, Canada's HMY Airways and, eventually, America West, which intends to start flying round trips between Vancouver and Las Vegas March 1.
"In addition to getting a link to the Philippines, we'll be getting additional lift from Vancouver," Kassap said.
Airline Business magazine lists Philippines Airlines as one of the world's top 10 most profitable companies by operating margin in 2002 with revenue of $826 million. The airline has a fleet of 30 planes, including long-range jumbo jets for international flights and Boeing 737 jets for flights within the Philippines.
The airline is the ninth foreign-based carrier to serve McCarran.
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