PacificFlier to connect Brisbane

PacificFlier the latest international airline to launch in Australia has announced that it will begin services between Brisbane and Micronesia by the end of March.

With its inaugural service commencing on the 31st of March, just in time for the Easter public holidays, Brisbane to the Philippines through the Republic of Palau.

“A long time in the planning and making, PacificFlier.com has been able to inaugurate a schedule of charter services with the full backing of the government of the Republic of Palau,” said PacificFlier in a statement.

PacificFlier operates one Airbus A310-300 flown in a two cabin configuration of Economy and Premium Economy. 18 Premium Economy seats offer 54" pitch and 21" width, while the rest of its economy seats offer 32" pitch and 18" width.

any idea as to how much it will be from brisbane return?

No, report doesnt say, sorry

This news originally came out last fall with service to start in January. If you check the threads from back then there should be information as one of the posters got prices for some of the routes.There was also some information posted on the Palau board at trip advisor. it will be interesting to see if this airline actually gets off the ground. They had a website up for awhile and then it was out so I'm not sure is was brought back on line.

The website's back at http://www.pacificflier.com/

You can't book online, but there is a phone number. Under holidays, they're advertising a 4-day package ex Brisbane 'from' $999.

if you are in the Philippines ... and you have time (and money) to kill ...
Pacific Flier has a promo Clark - (Koror)Palau- Clark (Philippines) 339USD (tax included?) for the round trip which is valid for the first 3 trips ex-Manila: Tuesday 30th, Thursday 1st March, Saturday 3tn April. Call the office in Manila for more info.
Phone is: 632 818 0502 and Fax: 632 818 4862.

if you are in the Philippines ... and you have time (and money) to kill ...
Pacific Flier has a promo Clark - (Koror)Palau- Clark (Philippines) 339USD (tax included?) for the round trip which is valid for the first 3 trips ex-Manila: Tuesday 30th, Thursday 1st March, Saturday 3tn April. Call the office in Manila for more info.
Phone is: 632 818 0502 and Fax: 632 818 4862.
Pacific Flier also offers its passengers living in Manila free shuttle bus service to and from the airport. nice :)

Does anyone know if Pacific Flier's Brisbane service actually started on 31 March as advertised?

It's definately flying now, the Brisbane-Palau service. I'm pretty sure they did start on 31 March. Pretty handy....

Thanks, Max. Have my flight booked for tomorrow, looking forward to it....

Apparently you can't see the prices or book through the website. So how much it would be to fly from Manila to Palau, one way or return? Hopefully this will bring some "better prices" alongside Continental's.

Just back from the 4 day trip to Palau - beautiful place, friendly people, loved it. I'd definitely recommend the trip.

Juho - you're right, they don't seem to show the fares. For the flights from Brisbane, they showed the package fares (which was what I booked) but not the airfares alone. I later found out the Brisbane-Palau return fare is $799. They are very easy to talk to on the phone, though, so just ring and ask - they're still keen to build up their customer base at the moment so ringing them gets very personalised service, it's definitely not a remote call centre.

Thanks Mattt. Palau is definitely something I want to visit so any additional information and experiences about this new airline are welcome!

On the airline - at the moment they have one plane, flying one return flight to Brisbane, and two return flights to Manila, each week. The plane is leased from a Portuguese airline and has a Portuguese crew.

It's a step up from budget-airline standard, but still fairly basic. They serve meals which were fine, and provide pillows and blankets. No movies or other entertainment. There are two classes - 'premium economy', which features business class size seats and seat pitch (though I thought the padding looked rather thin) but the same meals as ordinary economy; and economy, which are pretty standard economy seats in a 242 configuration (again, fairly thin padding on the seat).

My flights were very light loading, so there was plenty of room to stretch out.

The flights to and from Brisbane are both overnight, and a six-hour overnight flight is never a lot of fun, but arriving in Palau and being able to check in straight away at the Palau Pacific Resort at 6am for a bit more sleep, before getting up for their delicious buffet breakfast, made it worthwhile.

The airline are hoping to start flights to and from Guam in the near future. Unfortunately I think this may mean that they fly in a Palau-Brisbane-Guam-Palau triangle (or vice versa) so that there won't be direct flights any more in both directions - another reason to get in early if you're flying from Australia!