ANA Holdings will take a seat on the board of Philippine Airlines’ parent company PAL Holdings after taking a 9.5% stake in the company, while the two airlines will form a steering committee to pursue areas of further collaboration.
The committee will meet every six months to evaluate new developments and areas of partnership, and is expected to focus on areas of joint marketing, and expansion opportunities in the Philippines market.
ANA Holdings president and chief executive Shinya Katanozaka adds however that the finer details will be up to that committee to decide.
"In this committee, they're going to check what is needed further and what is going well, and what is not going very well, and so forth. So I'd like to leave the judgement to this committee," he told reporters during a press conference on 8 February.
The two carriers have had a codeshare relationship on Japan-Philippines and domestic routes since October 2014, while ANA also provides ground handling services for PAL at Tokyo Haneda International airport.
PAL president and chief operating officer Jaime Bautista said that ANA was chosen as its preferred strategic partner believes the Japanese company "will pave for a new era of further growth at Philippine Airlines," and support its ongoing transformation programme.
But Katanozaka appeared to rule out launching an immunised joint venture with PAL, as it has done with other carriers in the USA and European markets.
"With regards to a joint venture which will have anti-trust immunity... the kind of joint venture that we have with United or Lufthansa, we have no plans to proceed along that way," he says.
Similarly, ANA president and chief executive Yuji Hirako stressed that the two airlines aim to establish a "very firm, solid, and robust bilateral relationship" before there could be any discussions of PAL joining ANA in the Star Alliance.
Bautista indicated that PAL is still taking a broad view on which of the global alliances it could look to join.
"We are in the process now of evaluating which alliance will contribute to our system, and which alliance give more benefits to our passengers," he says.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
