Flight: PR2383

Route: IAO Del Carmen Siargao to CEB Cebu

Depart: 15h50

Arrive: 16h50

PAL Express, also known as Air Philippines Corporation and formerly branded as Air Philippines and Airphil Express, is an airline under the ownership of Philippine Airlines. It acts as PAL’s domestic division, with services from Manila, Cebu, Davao and Zamboanga. For today’s flight, we flew from Siargao to Cebu on PAL Express PR2383.

The airline has been re-branded a number of times, first as Air Philippines, then Airphil Express, and is now known as PAL Express. The flight departure time was 15h50, so we reached the airport one hour before as it is a domestic flight. The airport terminal in Siargao is very small, so there was a crowd control. They allowed the remaining few passengers on PAL Express to enter the building first for checkin before letting in the passengers on Cebu Pacific which was departing later.

Here is the waiting area for the boarding. There are only three gates and definitely not enough seats for everyone. Some were seen sitting on the floor or even on the sink area. The air-conditioning in the waiting hall was not working well, so the whole area was very stuffy.

Around the waiting area, there were educational posters such as this done by the local students of Siargao to educate the public on environmental conservation. There were also posters promoting the tourist sites in Siargao, including Sohoton National Park which we did not have time to visit.

Boarding call was made at 15h30 and people rushed to the gate for boarding. A staff member handed us an umbrella as we had to walk under the hot sun to the airplane.

View from the plane. It is a Bombardier Q400, a small propeller plane with 76 seats.

I kept myself occupied during the one-hour flight with these flight magazines. They even had the inflight magazine of the parent airline PAL, with this month’s feature on Phnom Penh as PAL had recently launched new direct flights. As for La Isla, PAL Express’ official in-flight magazine, it featured Saint Lucia on the cover even though this Caribbean destination is not on its flight route.

During the flight, we were served a light snack which consisted of a chocolate malt cupcake and a bottle of mineral water with Snow White. The cupcake was quite chocolatey and somewhat filled me up for the afternoon. Since the overall flight time is only 35 minutes, the crew could only serve a light snack which does not need much time to distribute and collect back. This is better than having peanuts on the SIN-KUL route because I do not like peanuts personally.

En route to Cebu, we flew past many different islands. This one had a long pier extending into the ocean and appeared spectacular to me. The coastline of the Philippines is huge with many of these islands and it is always a treat to see the deep blue waters surrounding the shoreline and the built-up settlement pattern of each island.

The plane landed about 12 minutes before the scheduled arrival time. We disembarked at the remote landing bay in Cebu and took a shuttle bus to the main terminal.

Overall, it was a pleasant flight with PAL Express and I would not hesitate to fly with them again. They also have direct flights from Siargao to Clark and Davao (capital of Mindanao) starting from 997 pesos one-way. Anyway, I chose this flight due to the timing so I could spend at least half a day to explore Siargao before heading to the airport in the afternoon.