CONNECTING THE ISLANDS
PAL’s role in building air links to unite our island nation
(By Ian San Gabriel – First seen in The PALiner July/August 2023 Issue)
The Philippines is an archipelagic country composed of thousands of land masses separated by bodies of water. Back in the day, the Republic, in its infancy, had limited to no access to good roads, and airports were not yet as highly developed.
Small airfields became vital in linking smaller communities in the Vis-Min area to the bigger city centers. These communities primarily depended on small, propeller-powered planes to bring essential goods and services. Bigger airports saw the trusty Douglas DC-3 serving their needs in the 1940s and 1950s; smaller rural areas would require connectivity to the provincial hubs that only a versatile class of commuter aircraft could provide.
Thus, when PAL introduced the country’s first Rural Air Service (RAS) System on June 15, 1955, it was a development of great significance to the growing nation.
The PAL RAS featured a network of flights within the Vis-Min area served by De Havilland of Canada DHC-3 Otters. These were 11-seater planes with Short-Take Off and Landing (STOL) capability that allowed them to land on 400-meter-long airstrips that were considered too small to accommodate the venerable DC-3s. PAL’s first island-hopper was powered by only one engine, a Pratt & Whitney R-1340.
The DHC-3 Otters took on the mission of connecting these remote rural areas to the trunkline stations. Provincial hubs such as Cebu, Cagayan de Oro and Davao were linked to heartland towns such as Toledo (Cebu) and San Carlos, (Negros Occidental) in the Visayas, and to Liloy (Zamboanga del Norte), Kiamba (Sarangani), Ipil (Zamboanga Sibugay), Gingoog (Misamis Oriental), and Buenavista (Agusan del Norte) in the Mindanao region, to name a few.
These rural routes were envisioned to serve as community lifelines, a way of boosting the nation’s economy by lifting up the fortunes of the far-flung regions.
In the Company’s quest to provide the finest air transport service, PAL acquired 19-seater Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneers in 1958 to replace the Otters. These twin-engine Pioneers were seen as a suitable replacement for the smaller, older single-engine planes, aimed at minimizing the financial challenges that beset the RAS service. By 1958, RAS contributed 5.1% of the revenue passengers carried by PAL, and 1.9% of transport revenues earned – exciting numbers given the small size of the aircraft and the rural network.
The Hawker Siddeley HS 748’s ability to land in rough airstrips connected towns to bigger cities.
The RAS service would continue to operate up until its suspension in May 1964. After its exit from the RAS routes, PAL would continue to link the islands using bigger turboprop planes. Through the years, various aircraft types would serve as “flying bridges,” including the Fokker 27, Hawker Siddeley HS 748 (the “Avro”), the Nihon YS-11, the Shorts SD360 “Sunriser” and the Fokker 50.
These services would gain the label “missionary routes”, hinting not only at their value to the economy but also their perennial inability to generate profits.
The pressures of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s led to the suspension of all turboprop services and the closure of PAL’s Cebu inter-island base.
On May 5, 2008, PAL saw the opportunity to revive this vital role of serving outlying stations under the PAL Express sub-brand, another historical first. With the Air Philippines Corporation operating the PAL Express flights, turboprop flights were re-introduced out of a revived Cebu hub.
Fleet modernization would continue with PAL’s procurement of brand-new Bombardier Q400 Next Generation aircraft that started flying in 2017, treating passengers to smoother flights at near-jet speeds (30% faster than conventional turboprops) in quieter cabins (because of an advanced Active Noise and Vibration Suppression system). These modern, high-performance, 86-seater aircraft also featured bigger windows and improved LED lighting for a more relaxed environment, while allowing for increased passenger loads and greater efficiency for a new era of rural air services.
The Q400s continue to serve as PAL’s prime island-connectors today, although they are now known as De Havilland Dash 8 400s, following the 2019 acquisition of the Bombardier Q400 program by Longview Capital under the De Havilland name and trademark.
Christoph Gaertner, Vice President for Planning, said, “There are a number of airports in the Philippines and in our network that cannot accommodate jet operations. We would not be able to serve all those airports without the Dash 8. It allows us to operate an attractive product with more frequencies.”
And so, from a postwar rural network run with tiny De Havilland Otters landing on rough runways, we come full circle to the 21st century version of a De Havilland fleet anchoring a high-frequency network that stretches from Basco to Siargao, from Tawi-Tawi to Coron. PAL’s smallest aircraft continue to connect the islands and unify the nation — as vital a mission as ever.
See more photos from this story in this issue of The PALiner: https://thepaliner.philippineairlines.com/2023/08/28/the-paliner-july-august-2023/
