We booked Thai Airways for our flight to Bangkok. We had initially looked into both Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific thinking they would be cheaper, especially Ceb Pac, which is supposed to be a low cost carrier (LCC) or a budget airlines. They both turned out to be expensive so I suggested to the wife to check out Thai Airways since we were spending anyway and we wanted to have the full service that included decent inflight meals. Lo and behold, Thai Airways was actually cheaper than PAL or CebPac (note that we booked early so we had a lot of options for the latter airlines).

Our Thai Airways Airbus A350 at the NAIA Terminal 3. Also shown in the photo is the old Philippine Village Hotel building that surprisingly has not been demolished despite being abandoned for more than 3 decades. This is the proposed site of a Terminal 5 for NAIA that will be constructed and operated by San Miguel Corporation.

We had two choices for our inflight meal – stir-fried shrimp with chili sauce and rice or chicken in tomato sauce with pasta.

The stir-fried shrimp with chili sauce came with carrots and young corn on the side. The set included salad, cake for dessert and a bun.

The only difference between the set was the main course. This is the chicken and pasta I eventually ate when I exchanged meals with my daughter who surprised us by preferring the spicy shrimp.

The A350 was equipped with a tail camera for those who wanted this view of the plane. I took a video of when the plane landed to show my students about the landing including when the plane exited the runway via the rapid exit ramp.

We thought the food on economy class was okay and definitely better than what could have been served on either PAL or CebPac. What are better (on economy) if not similar in quality would be the food on Singapore Airlines and Japan Airlines.

More on our travel to Thailand in the next posts.

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