A close member of my family is dying - terminal lukemia, and has been given 2 weeks at the most by the doctors.
I need to book a flight to the USA (SFO) asap and the cheapest I can find is Philippine airlines for roughly 18,000 NT pre-tax (22,000 with tax and fees).
Does anyone have personal experience with Philippine airlines? They rank pretty low for safety. The next step up in price would be EVA for about 28,000 with tax and fees.
Your input is appreciated.
I’ve flown Philippine a few times, including a flight to Australia, and have no complaints.
EVA are good.
Re. safety: they fly god knows how many flights each and every day; even if they were the worst, you’d still be safer than jumping into a bus heading across the island.
I flew Philippine Airlines a few years ago and wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. Not only did the smoking row begin in the row right behind mine (even in Business Class and this was 2002!) but, more in line with your concerns, we did indeed have a mechanical fault and had to return to Manila for several more hours while they put us on another plane to Taipei.
A lot of their problems in the past were, I believe, financial due to poor business practices, corruption, union action etc. Which meant that safety was skimped on.
But since they were re-privatized in 2000 or so, they’ve returned to profitability and safety standards have risen dramatically. They now meet the IATA’s safety guidelines - in fact the IATA audit was only a few months ago, so safety shouldn’t have declined in such a short space of time.
Hope all is well.
Not sure about Asian airlines, but a lot of US airlilnes will offer a bereavement fare. Call United and NWA and see what they can do. United offers non-stops now, BTW.
I sure hope Philippine Airlines is better than they were 10 years ago. I flew with them to Vancouver once…and vowed never to do it again. It was a very unpleasant flight.
Most Asian airlines do not offer a bereavement fair. I just went through this in May 2007. China Airlines offered me zippo. No explanation either.
[quote=“Quarters”]A close member of my family is dying - terminal lukemia, and has been given 2 weeks at the most by the doctors.
I need to book a flight to the USA (SFO) asap and the cheapest I can find is Philippine airlines for roughly 18,000 NT pre-tax (22,000 with tax and fees).
Does anyone have personal experience with Philippine airlines? They rank pretty low for safety. The next step up in price would be EVA for about 28,000 with tax and fees.
Your input is appreciated.[/quote]
iv taken phillippines airlines twice from TPE to SFO. They are quite safe and in fact have a very good safety record (outside of the PHillippines itself). Bad thing was there was a five hour layover at the MNL airport . That sucked big time. The dc10 they used before had to stop in guam (3 hour flight) for refueling then onwards to honolulu (7 hours) then you deplaned to go thru US customs there and then another five hours to SFO. The 747s skipped the guam refueling. So it was 10 hours to honolulu, deplane and go thru customs and then another five hours to SFO. But still had the horrid 5 hour stopover in MNL.
service was good and it was pleasant. To think I even took it to save 1000nt over northwest.
but EVA is a quick nonstop that only takes 10 and a half hours from TPE to SFO.
EDIT: sorry to hear bout your family member
P.S. I took phillippines airlines back in 1979 with the dc 10 and then it was 15,000nt one way or 30,000nt return (no cheaper to buy return tickets then) . And northwest was 16,000nt each way.
So if your tickets are roundtrip at those prices? They are sure good. Considering that 1979 dollars are worth at least 3 times todays dollars? Cept I guess in english teaching dollars, we got 350nt / hour then. And today its 500nt/hour?
But everything else was far cheaper.
I would go with EVA though unless you are saving 10,000 nt? EVA is quick and fast and good.
Sorry to hear about your trouble Q. Good luck in getting home.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. I suggest whichever airline you take to just go with hand luggage and take a direct flight. The more stops the more potential for trouble. Do they do courier fares ex-Taipei? I haven’t flown Philippines since 1992 and they were horrible. Taipei-Manila-Bangkok-Karachi-Frankfurt-London with a 19 hour delay in Bangkok.
airlinequality.com/main/forum.htm
is a good place to check out airlines
United Airlines will reinstate direct flights to San Francisco beginning tomorrow. No idea what the cost will be.
Re. EVA and “bereavement fare”. About 3 or 4 years ago I had sight of the manual they gave their staff. I noticed there were some special conditions available. From memory there was no special fare in terms of cash, but they would suspend some of the normal requirements: eg some discounted tickets which would only be available 14 days in advance would be made available right up to take-off time. If already half-way through a ticket, then the return portion could be changed with any applicable fare waived. If the particular fare bucket is unavailable, they may release a seat from a higher fare.
So one way would be to find out (perhaps from a travel agent) the cheapest fare that is currently applicable (regardless of availability). If there are no seats but you like the fare, get a note of the fare code and then phone EVA to see if they can release a seat and make a reservation. The agent (or perhaps EVA) could then issue the ticket against that reservation.
If you do call EVA, consider getting a Chinese speaker to do it, if you don’t speak Chinese well. EVA’s telephone staff are OK for basic enquiries, but I’ve had trouble with more unusual queries. Also a Chinese speaker can bamboozle them a little and get through to a more senior supervisor who can make a decision. The more senior they are, the poorer they seem to be at English.
Consider using www.seatcounter.com just to get a rough idea of availability.