Review: Philippine Airlines Hiraya Flight Pass

Introduction

I typically visit Cebu and Zamboanga Peninsula at least twice a year in December and in May but this August, I had to go home due to a family emergency. With the ever increasing costs of flights both for Philippine Airlines (PAL) and Cebu Pacific, I wanted to find a way to minimize the amount of money I spent on flights.

What is PAL’s Hiraya Flight Pass?

The Hiraya Flight Pass is PAL’s answer to people who want to fly more but want to keep their budgets in check. It offers bulk purchasing of x number of tickets (at least 4) for a set period of time. It’s fully customizable, you define all the destinations you would want, for how long, what type of seats, how early you need to book the dates, etc. All of these preferences will make your flight pass either more flexible (more costly) or less flexible (cheaper). For the price of getting and paying for multiple tickets in advanced, you save a lot on a per flight basis compared to booking tickets outright when you need them.

Who is this for?

By want to fly more, it could be just 4 flights in a year. The flight pass applies to both domestic and international travel. If you hop on a flight at least 4 times in the next month, 3 months, 6 months, or year, you will already start saving. But the savings really start to pile up after that. Additionally, if you’re the type who knows they will travel during the year but don’t know when, you can set your flight pass in such a way that you won’t be paying for emergency flight prices all the time. Flight passes are shareable with other people, however, your ability to share depends on the number of flights you buy in one flight pass. Refer to their FAQ for more info.

Promo Fares and CEBSuperPass

When I realized I was going to go home more often this year, I checked for promos. Everybody usually start with promos, Cebu Pacific has CEBSuperPass too but you can only buy it during specific times of the year and have its own limitations. Buying during promotions limits your travel dates and are usually less ideal. But these two options are worth it when you can get them. I used to fly through Cebu Pacific by default because I assumed it was cheaper since it was the “low-cost” airline. But that is not the case anymore if it was ever the case. They always hid luggage prices and other fees to make it harder to compare with PAL flights.

Whenever I do try to check Philippine Airlines over the years of flying, they do sometimes have better deals especially when you want luggage but this has also changed. They’ve always limit the number of “cheaper” seats to some minimum number and then you’re forced to pay for their higher tier which is still economy. Nonetheless promos and even cebpass only work for vacations and not for urgent flights like emergencies.

My Experience

As somebody who grew up in Mindanao and Visayas but now live in Makati, flights to and from my hometown or relatives I want to visit has never been optional. While most people I know at the office go home to their provinces by bus which has its own ups and downs, doing 3 day bus trip through the national highway system (with roros) is simply not an option short of making it a trip on its own. So flights it is, although I am tempted to try 2Go’s ships from Manila to Cebu. 

And so in early August, I bought a flight pass for four flights, thinking I was only gonna use it the first two for my emergency trip home and saving the next two for Christmas. However, it’s never that simple in emergencies. I ended up using all my flights in the span of a month and buying another flight pass for another four flights. 

Once you have the flight pass, all booking is handled through the hiraya flight pass site. While you still get emails from PAL, all bookings and booking changes are through the flight pass site. Since this was an emergency and there was a lot of uncertainties in my trip, I had to move my flights a lot. Thankfully, this was easy to do and free. Just as long as you you’re following the rules on the flight pass such as being within “booking period (number of days) before flight”, you shouldn’t have to pay extra. And in the situation where I went outside the parameters of my flight pass such as booking the flight 7 days before instead of 14, the total price I paid on top of the flight pass plus the price of the flight pass was still vastly cheaper than buying a ticket from either Cebupac or PAL outright.

How much are the savings?

Now for the savings, giving absolute numbers is difficult, I can only offer some anecdotal evidence from my experience. With the flight pass I got, I chose 4 flights for the 3 destinations I would use. The savings is highly variable depending on when you’re booking and what customizations you’ve made in your flight pass. But from my experience, when I was booking my flight back to Manila, I was already saving almost 28% (P1000) for a flight back to Manila based on the prices PAL and Cebupac had on their site for the day I wanted to fly versus getting the same flight from a flight pass I was buying. And on the instance where I was outside the rules on my flight pass and had to pay extra, the total cost of my flight (prorated flight pass cost + additional payment) was 33% (P2000) lower still than what both airlines were showing me on their websites. Suffice to say, my savings were substantive during one month of flying and I didn’t even set my flight pass to the cheapest possible configuration I could have made them. Aside from the custom flight pass that I bought, PAL also offers “express buy” flight passes on the site, which seems to offer up to 50% savings of the flight cost.

Summary

While this isn’t for everyone, if you already know you’ll be flying four flights or more this year and have the money ready. You should give the hiraya flight pass a try. Promotions might still offer cheaper prices if you’re not buying a lot of flights in advance but they are not that common and they have plenty of limitations. I’ve already bought another 4 flights after I used up my first flight pass and moving forward, I’ll be buying all my flights through the flight pass system especially next year when I want to travel more often.