Continental offers special packages for Manila flights

Continental Airlines will begin its third weekly flight to Manila on Dec. 6, Tuesday, with packages worth as low as $369 between now and March next year.

Continental marketing & sales manager for Guam and Micronesia Lou Sanchez said during a breakfast gathering held at Aqua Resort Club Saturday that people traveling between now and Dec. 11, can avail themselves of the $369 package or $417, inclusive of taxes and fuel surcharge.

This is a roundtrip economy class package from Saipan to Manila, which includes one night hotel stay and breakfast.

The package allows customers to stay in the Philippines for 14 days.

From Dec. 12 to 31, the package is set at $425 or $472 including the necessary taxes.

Beginning Jan. 1 to March 1, 2006, the fare package is $510 or $557 inclusive of taxes.

During the gathering, which was attended by members of the Filipino community, Sanchez said that customers who would be choosing the December package but are still staying behind in Manila after New Year can do so.

In this case, she said that customers would be paying 50-50 or half of the price of December package and half of the price of the January fare.

Likewise, she said that customers can choose if they want to stay in a hotel upon their arrival or on the night before their departure from Manila.

“We’re flexible. We’re giving our customers choices,” she said.

Sanchez said the third weekly flights is being offered in anticipation of high demand as more Filipinos visit their families and relatives in the Philippines during the Christmas season.

She said the Philippines is also “a nice getaway for the locals.”

“It’s near and the flight schedules are just perfect. They can go there Tuesday and return Thursday or Sunday or leave Sunday and return by Tuesday or Thursday,” she said.

She said Manila is the ideal place “to pamper yourself…without spending too much.”

The airline’s packages include air-hotel-transfer service.

She said Continental offers additional flights based on the traffic flow.

“When the peak is down, we’ll take it down,” she said.

Currently, Continental flies from Saipan to Manila on Thursdays and Sundays.

Saipan-Manila flights leave at 6:15pm and arrive at 7:15pm while Manila-Saipan plane departs the Asian country’s capital at 10:05pm and arrive on the island at 3:40am.

The airline earlier said that that due to increasing fuel cost and low traffic, it will stop the Guam-Saipan-Taipei flights effective Nov. 1, 2005 and drop Saipan from its Hong Kong route effective Nov. 7, 2005.