I mentioned a little more a than a week ago that I’d have another flight with the Philippine Airlines A350-900 in the works, and I’ve got a trip report for it today! After once having a total of six airframes in the fleet, Philippine Airlines’s active A350-900s number just two, with the other four being returned to lessors. As a result, the type’s route network is rather limited, with only one destination in the U.S. seeing the type with anything approaching regularity, Seattle. Philippine Airlines started serving Jet City on October 2nd, 2024, with the 777-300ER, which at the time was also flying to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. However, PR has seemingly been on an A350 kick in the Pacific Northwest, so this presented me with an excellent opportunity to get in another flight with the airline’s A350-900, and on an often overlooked route, too. Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy reading the trip report as much as I enjoyed flying the route!
Server: Solo
Airline: Philippine Airlines
Aircraft: Airbus A350-900
Origin: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, SeaTac, Washington (SEA)
Destination: Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Manila, Philippines (MNL)
Flight Number: PR125
Route: KSEA-RPLL
Seat: 41A (Economy)
Time En Route: 13 Hours 32 Minutes
After eating dinner at the South Concourse, we’re getting ready to board our aircraft at Gate S10. After a fairly rainy afternoon and early evening, the weather cleared up around 8:00 P.M., leaving the ramp slick and shiny with wetness. Philippine Airlines’s A350-900s only regularly fly to one U.S. destination anymore, which means we’re predictably excited to be back aboard the type. More to the point, this’ll be our first time flying in economy on PR’s A350-900, so we’re interested to see how it is.
Taxiing along the runways as we watch the pre-flight safety video. Even this late at night, SeaTac is still active, evinced by an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 landing on the middle runway from somewhere further down the West Coast. Our first impression on economy class of this aircraft is solidly in the above-average category, with the seats being clean and offering a decent amount of legroom, more than we’d typically expect from economy class. However, the seats are a bit narrow and the aircraft is not equipped with AC power outlets, at least here in economy. It’s a minor inconvenience, to be sure, but still an annoying one.
Takeoff from SeaTac’s Runway 16L into the night sky over Seattle. Despite the narrowness of our seat, the middle one in our row is unoccupied, allowing us to lift up the armrest to allow for more elbow room. Falling asleep is looking very tempting at the moment, with the cabin lighting dimmed to a cool blue and the rumble of the two Trent XWBs filling our ears. We’ll try to stay asleep until we reach our cruising altitude, though.
As we climb out of the Seattle area, we can see Mount Ranier in the distance with the moonlight reflecting off of the snow on it. This iconic stratovolcano is to Seattle what Mount Fuji is to Tokyo, although it is far more active and poses a far greater threat to its nearby city if it has a full-scale eruption than the latter. At the moment, though, it is a quiet, majestic sentinel in the Cascade Volcanic Arc, being visible at ground level for miles around. Not a bad view to leave the PNW with at all by any stretch of the imagination, especially with the flash of the wingtip strobe light lighting up the night!
After catching a few hours of sleep, we’ve awoken over the Aleutians, having ascended another couple flight levels from our initial cruising altitude to 36,000 feet. At this time in the summer, there’s only a couple hours or so when it gets dark out this far north, and we’re right in the middle of that time window. The Moon is still up, allowing us to view the various mountains of the Aleutians below us as their summits are bathed in light. Inside the cabin, the “dinner” service has begun and we’ve put in an order for the Pinoy Chicken BBQ, which looks especially appealing to us tonight.
Several hours and some more sleep later and we’ve woken up and are now watching Ford v Ferrari, about the quest by the American automaker to beat the Italian powerhouse at Le Mans, culminating in a 1-2-3 finish by all three Ford GT40 at the 1966 race. We first saw it when it came out in 2019 and it’s been a consistent choice for a rematch since. We definitely have a great platform to view it on, with an absolutely enormous IFE screen in the back of the seat in front of us that feels almost decadent for economy seating. Sleeping in economy on Philippine Airlines’s A350-900 was decent enough, helped by the fact that we didn’t need to worry about elbow room on this flight, although we’d prefer lying down to sitting upright.
Descending over the coast of Luzon as we near Manila. It’s been fairly sedate here in economy, with most passengers still asleep. Can’t say that we blame them, though, what with the flight being spent in near complete darkness and the cabin’s mood lighting being extremely conducive to nodding off.
Arriving in Manila in the very early morning. Touching down on the runway was so smooth as to be barely perceptible, before the nose gear came down, the spoilers went up, and the thrust reversers opened. Now we’re decelerating smoothly to taxi speed, with Manila Tower in thr background. MNL is largely quiet this time in the morning, with only a few long-haul arrivals punctuating the periods of inactivity.
Taxiing into the Terminal 1 ramp by a few other Philippine Airlines widebodies that’ll be leaving within the next few hours for destinations around Asia and Oceania. It’s strange flying into a major international airport that’s almost completely at a standstill. We’re not used to seeing so many widebodies parked and not actively boarding or disembarking people. The other passengers who were asleep are finally starting to wake up as we prepare to pull into the gate.
Deplaned at Terminal 1 and looking back at our aircraft before going through customs and getting our bag. Philippine Airlines’s economy product on the A350-900 can be described as solid, an 85/15 split on the side of “good”. The main issues were the narrowness of the seats and the lack of AC power, though we were able to charge our phone using the available USB port while we slept and we were able to put the armrest up to give us some more space. These minor inconveniences aside, we had a very good flight with PR and we’d recommend them to anyone traveling to the Philippines from the West Coast!