PAL recovery seen after restructuring

Philippine Airlines (PAL) president Gilbert Santa Maria expects the flag carrier to bounce back after an ongoing restructuring program launched during the COVID-19 crisis.

“We have faith in our restructuring ability,” Santa Maria said in a television interview with CNN Philippines, adding that expansion was on the horizon.

“We are working on reopening for tourism, we’re working on tourism plans,” he said. “We are going to keep doing that and expand the economy because that’s the only way we will also survive.”

Santa Maria did not provide details but he confirmed that PAL, owned by billionaire Lucio Tan with Japan’s ANA Holdings as minority partner, had reduced its fleet by returning planes and had been talking with lessors to preserve cash.

“We are managing liquidity [and] we’re trying to continue to get the forbearance of our lessors on the payments of the aircraft,” Santa Maria said during the interview, which was aired on May 14.

PAL operated a fleet of 98 planes as of September last year. Of these, 49 planes were leased from 19 companies, according to aviation data analytics company Cirium.

PAL has been mum on its rehabilitation program, which was earlier described as a “comprehensive restructuring plan that will ensure its viability.”

It is also eyeing a Chapter 11 creditor protection filing in New York as it moves to restructure as much as $5 billion in obligations, the Inquirer previously reported.

The aviation sector was among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and other airlines had taken initiatives to cut costs and seek a compromise deal with creditors.

PAL itself had survived a previous rehabilitation program that was executed in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

During the interview, Santa Maria said PAL would continue operations and was even planning to expand once COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.

He said the carrier had also resorted to more cargo-only flights to each transpacific destinations. It has also been repatriating Filipinos based overseas and more recently, carrying vaccine deliveries.

“Philippine Airlines is surviving with difficulty, with as much grace as we can muster and with what we in PAL call ‘MDI’ or management by divine intervention,” Santa Maria said. INQ