Our Journey to Another Land: The Flight

I have 5 more days to go before I start work (I’ll be sharing my experience in another post) and with a lot of things to share, I am using whatever free time I have left to write.

April 17, 2016 is our flight date, we’re flying with Philippine Airlines bound for Toronto with a technical stopover in Vancouver. We stayed in a hotel near the airport for easy and hassle free ride to the airport. But yeah, hassle happens.

Our flight tickets indicate that our departure port is at the Main Terminal and all along we assumed that it is NAIA Terminal 1. After saying our goodbyes to our family, we rode an Uber to the “Main Terminal” 4.5 hours before the flight. Since we have a lot of time, we tried to relax and enjoy our last few hours in Manila.

We are about to enter Terminal 1 when the guard who asked for our tickets told us that we are at the wrong terminal and that we are supposed to be in Terminal 2. After I did some verifications (through the information section and of course the internet), we are indeed leaving through Terminal 2 (PAL’s Main Terminal). With 3 hours to go, we arrived at Terminal 2.

Unfortunately, there were many passengers at that time and we have to queue for 30 minutes just to enter the terminal. Here you’ll see people bribing airport employees just so they can enter the terminal instantly. This is one of the reasons why you’ll want to leave the Philippines.

We are supposed to do a web check-in  and since PAL’s online applications are so reliable, we were not able do a web check-in and have to do it the old fashion way. After another 45 minutes, we were able to secure our boarding passes. Note that you need to pay travel taxes for all the people who will be travelling with you. You can look up the rates here http://tieza.gov.ph/travel-tax/. We paid a total of PHP 4250 for two adults and one minor.

After securing our boarding passes, we went to the immigration officer. Here, they will ask for your passports. You have to tell them that you will be migrating. They will then validate your PDOS sticker, your visa, as well as your passport details. It usually takes around 5 minutes if there’s no problem. After an agonising 3.5 hours we arrived at our gate. We boarded at round 3PM and due to some circumstances, we flew at around 430PM (1.5 hours delayed).

The seats that were provided to us were very comfortable with excellent leg room. We were transferred to a better Choice Seat. This is our first long haul flight and it was a good experience (at least the inflight experience with PAL is good). We arrived in Vancouver after 12 hours. Some passengers alighted here while Toronto-bound passengers stayed on the plane. After an hour, the plane continued its flight to Toronto for another 4.5 hours. We arrived at around 9PM Toronto time, 25 minutes earlier than the estimated arrival.

Be sure to fill-out the arrival card (one per family, be sure to declare monetary instruments that are more than CAD 10,000) provided by the flight attendants that will be presented to the Canadian immigration officer. After presenting your passports to the immigration officer, they will ask you to queue to another room where they process new residents. Here, you will present your Certificate of Permanent Residency (COPR), passports and other documents for after around 45 minutes. Then, they will welcome you to Canada and will tell you that your PR Card will be sent to your indicated address in 4-6 weeks. They will also give you an instruction sheet on how to update your address if ever you will be changing your address.

You will now collect your luggages and will proceed to customs. Here you will declare monetary instruments exceeding CAD 10,000 and if the customs officer deemed necessary, a detailed list of all belonging accompanying you and those that are to follow. The officer only asked for the E677 – CROSS-BORDER CURRENCY OR MONETARY INSTRUMENTS REPORT form and after that, we were able to exit the airport. We were welcomed by my cousin and a brother in The Feast.

It has been a week and three days since we’ve arrived and we are still adjusting to the time difference and of course, the cold weather. This post ends this section. I’ll be starting a new section soon where I will share all our experiences here as new permanent residents. Until next post.

Our Journey to Another Land: Booking Our Flight

And so our journey continues. We just purchased our plane tickets from Manila to Toronto from Philippine Airlines after 14 tries! Imagine filling-out the forms for 5 to 10 minutes, but when you try paying through credit/debit card, site will tell you that there’s an error. I did it 14 times; you can imagine how long it took me to book this flight.

We haven’t experienced being in any long haul flights so I really have no idea what it feels like to be inside a plane for 18 hours straight, so again, we have to research to find the best experience at the best (cheapest) price possible.

There are a lot of considerations when choosing your airline; first the duration of the flight (we have our baby with us so this is on top of our list), leg room, the number of stops (transfers), rebooking fee and of course the total price. Since we will be coming from Manila, we limited our search to some of the most prominent airlines within Asia. We narrowed it down to Philippine Airlines, Korean Airlines, ANA, Cathay Pacific and EVA air based on reviews and recommendations by friends. These carriers have almost the same cost ranging from USD1800 to USD2600 and baggage conditions on the day of our flight, so we’re just left with the duration of the flight, leg room and number of stops.

Duration of the flight and the number of stopovers can be viewed from each of the carriers’ online booking platform. Duration of flight ranges from 19 to 22 hours and number of stops from 1 to 3 stops. The Philippine Airlines flight will have a one hour technical stopover in Vancouver. The other airlines have a stopover in their home airports before proceeding directly to Toronto except for ANA which have a stopover in Los Angeles.

For estimating the leg room we used http://www.seatguru.com/ to check the details of the seat pitch and seat width as well as the best seats per plane and carrier based on reviews. In estimating the legroom, we used the seat pitch which is the distance from any point on one seat to the exact same point on the seat in front or behind it. So the rule is the higher the seat pitch, the better. Note though that this doesn’t represent the leg room at all but this could be a basis.

There are other considerations such as stopover/layover time, miles accumulation (most of the airlines have this offering for free, so it will be good to have an account for miles) and food. These factors were not our main concerns so we skipped looking through them.

We ended up with Philippine Airlines although Korean Airlines based on reviews is a really good candidate. We chose PAL because it has the shortest travel time, least number of stopovers and a not so bad seat pitch. We also purchase Choice seats for more legroom since our infant will be sitting on our laps and insurance. Total cost is USD2028 for a one-way ticket.

Below is the comparison table that we created so we can compare the airlines easier.

Flights Comparison

With this, all that’s left is to pack our things; secure documents that will be needed in Canada (birth certificates, TOR, diploma, wedding certificates) attend PDOS and land. Do let me know if you have questions and I’ll try to answer it.

Until next post.