PAL MAY DROP SOME DOMESTIC FLIGHTS TO FOCUS ON INT'L ROUTES

Tycoon Lucio Tan’s Philippine Airlines says the flight cancelations due to last week's strike and a continuing shortage of manpower may lead it to drop some domesticflights and focus on international routes, which make up almost 80 percent of revenue.

The cancelations started September 27, when some ground crew members staged a sudden strike to protest their retrenchment on September 30. PAL retrenched 2,600 airport services, call-center and in-flight catering employees on that date, turning over their jobs to outsourcing companies as part of a plan to improve profitability. Cancelations have continued because the outsourcing companies are understaffed.