With more than 7,000 islands to explore, domestic air travel is the fastest way to get around the Philippines. Domestic air travel is cheap and there are a number of daily trips to the most popular destinations. There are also a number of domestic airline carriers to choose from. It’s also worth noting that most domestic airlines have a departure tax of 200 pesos, so for your own convenience, better reserve that amount on each trip. With the rise in the awareness of terrorism, it’s also a good to avoid joking about carrying bombs, since you will definitely be pulled out of the plane.

The first choice of course would be Philippine Airlines. There are daily trips to 21 major destinations all throughout the country. Asian Spirit Airlines are the true innovators in the domestic travel market. They initiated flights to small airport terminals which were often neglected by the other airlines. They were the first airline to offer direct flights to Caticlan Airport, which is the gateway to the now famous Boracay beaches. They are also the only airline that offers trips to Bagiuo, which can only be reached via Bus travel before. South East Asian airlines followed the Asian Spirit footsteps, concentrating their flights to popular tourist destinations. Cebu Pacific Airlines was the first competitor to Philippine Airlines. They were known to be “the other airline” before, since Philippine Airlines was the only domestic airline in the country before they came along and their fares were a lot cheaper than Philippine Airlines. But Cebu Pacific proved that low-cost doesn’t necessarily mean poor service, and soon they became favored by travelers over Philippine Airlines. Air Philippines is a subsidiary of Philippine Airlines, specially created to compete in the low-cost airline market initiated by Cebu Pacific. It has fewer destinations than Philippine Airlines though. Pacific Pearl Airways is the newest airline to burst in the domestic flight scene, but they only offer four destinations: Boracay, Manila, Tugegarao, and Subic. All airlines except Pacific Pearl have daily trips to the major destinations such as Manila, Cebu, Palawan, Davao, and Zamboanga. There are also charter services for both passenger and cargo charter flights. Subic Seaplane is the most well known. There’s also Interisland Airlines and Omni Aviation.

Domestic airline travel in the Philippines was often ridiculed back in the early 1990’s. A succession of Airplane crashes brought a barrage of jokes about the Airlines in the Philippines. They say that Cebu Pacific means “take off in Cebu, land in the Pacific”, for Asian Spirit – “Get in as an Asian, Get out as a Spirit”. But since Philippine Airlines has now lost its monopoly in domestic air travel and the other airlines provided cheaper fares, passenger volume still increased, despite the plane crashes. The good news is that as more and more Filipinos now prefer traveling by plane, and tourist hotspots such as Boracay and Puerto Galera has been attracting more foreign tourists, the Airline companies are now upgrading and improving their services. I haven’t heard or read about a passenger Airline crash for more than 5 years now. It’s more common to hear about Government and Military planes and Helicopter crashes than an airline carrier crash.

The idea of upgrading and improvement being made by the airline companies seem to have eluded the airport terminals however. The ATO just recently demoted the quality of Philippine Airports just last January of 2008. Government officials sourgraped about the action and said that the faults that ATO cited were minor and can be easily fixed. However, the ATO was proven correct for their decision when just 2 months after, the domestic terminal suffered a major delay in domestic the flights because of a mere power outage. Flights were delayed for more than 4 hours, since the terminal didn’t seem to have a back-up generator available. If it’s any consolation however, in-flight services of all Philippine airline companies are regarded as one of the best in the world. Foreigners often say that you almost feel like the flight attendants are your personal maids, that aside from being very polite and hospitable, they really take care of the passengers.

What most people don’t know is that Philippine Airlines is the very first and oldest commercial airline in the whole of Asia. Sad to say, it remained old. Despite being the first, it failed to cope up with the times and has been overtaken by the Flagship carriers of other Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. Some people say that even secondary flight carriers of Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Japan are still better than Philippines Airline. Filipino pilots are also dwindling in numbers, and the best Filipino pilots are being hauled to other countries because of the lucrative salary that Philippine Airlines can not possibly match. The only shining light left for the Philippine Aviation Industry seems to be our flight stewardess and crews. Other airlines might have better planes, better in-flight amenities, or even better food, but the Filipino stewardesses and crew members would definitely provide passengers with the best services, politeness, and hospitality that other airline companies would find difficult to match.