Review of Jetstar Asia Airways flight from Singapore to Manila in Economy

Note: Besides Jetstar Asia, there’s another shutdown in July 2025 that personally affects me: Pocket, the read-it-later app that Mozilla acquired in 2017. I used it heavily over the past decade-plus, including to scroll through trip reports from this website in a reader-friendly way after they were published here. Mozilla announced Pocket’s closure on 22 May 2025, and on 8 July Pocket closed down for good (though it remains in an export-only mode until 8 October) — bringing an unfortunate end to one of my most-used web apps!

Life updates: My return to India, the Jetstar Asia shutdown, the Air India crash

Before I proceed with my farewell tribute to Jetstar Asia and the rest of the report, I need to get some things out of the way first. In my last report — Qatar Airways’ fifth-freedom flight from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City — that was published at the end of May 2025, I’d said that I wouldn’t be active on this website for the next several months. Why, then, am I back here within just a month or so of saying that? Because these are exceptional times: a sad but swift business decision, followed by a heartbreaking global tragedy — that too in my own country.

Let me provide the context. In the first week of June 2025 I left Singapore permanently and returned to Bengaluru, India, to start my two-year journey in the prestigious and hard-to-enter IIM Bangalore business school. I took the rather circuitous routing of Singapore Airlines’ 777-300ER First Class to Jakarta, followed by SriLankan Airlines’ A321neo Business Class from Jakarta to Colombo, and another SriLankan A320 to BLR. (All for the love of using miles and points, my friends!) No sooner did I start adjusting to campus and hostel life than I was hit with these two aviation headlines on consecutive days: one a business shutdown, the other a horrifying and mysteriously chilling tragedy.

If 11 June was a sad but somewhat expected farewell to Jetstar Asia Airways, the airline that is the theme of this report, 12 June brought the worst aviation disaster India — and the world — has seen in years. I don’t need to tell you what happened: an Air India 787-8 Dreamliner (VT-ANB), operating flight AI171 to London Gatwick, crashed to the ground within seconds of taking off from Ahmedabad (AMD) in western India.* All but one of the 242 souls on board perished in the resultant fire that ravaged the vicinity of the airport, and it took days to identify the victims — badly charred as they were — through DNA testing. (Miraculously, there was a sole survivor: a Briton of Indian descent.) Moreover, many students in a nearby medical hostel were killed as well when the doomed Dreamliner slammed into them, bringing the official death toll to 260: the worst air disaster since MH17 in 2014.

It was a shocking, horrifying event for not only Air India — which has put in so much effort to turn itself around as a competitive global carrier — but the global aviation community. The whole world was appalled at how a Boeing 787, a type which had never suffered a fatal accident in its decade-plus of flying, could fall from the sky within seconds and kill almost everyone on board. As an Indian, AI171 pained me deep within, though I tried my best not to show it. Even so, the Tata Group, the owner of Air India, has done an exemplary job handling the crisis, and passed its most brutal test of character so far — though I can’t say the same for the Indian government’s accident investigation committee. Anyway…

*By the way, Ahmedabad is home to historically THE most prestigious business school of India: IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA) — though IIM Bangalore, where I’ve now joined, has beaten it in the latest QS rankings as India’s best business school. In any case, I’m thanking my lucky stars that I was not in Ahmedabad at the time of the tragedy, choosing to study in Bengaluru instead.

And now we come to why I’m publishing this trip report before all the other exciting flights I’ve taken in the first few months of 2025. Now that I’ve managed to get the heavy burden of the AI171 crash off my chest, let me get to what I actually intend to talk about: my tribute to Jetstar Asia, which will fly into the sunset at the end of July 2025.

How this trip came about (in some detail)

Before I talk about Jetstar Asia’s goodbye itself, let me share a few details on how this mini-trip came about in the spoiler below. This part will be a little longer, so I’ve put it in the spoiler so as not to detract from my main focus: how Jetstar Asia Airways (code: 3K) remained small and struggling throughout, crippled by one policy change too many — ostensibly to benefit Singapore Airlines and Scoot at its own expense — and failed to succeed beyond the 20 years that it was in the skies. THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG — please skip if needed!

Goodbye, Jetstar Asia Airways: The little airline that couldn’t*

*This title, for those unfamiliar, is borrowed from the American book and movie The Little Engine That Could.

I feel sorry for Jetstar Asia. This Singaporean airline was founded back in 2004, and within a year acquired another Singaporean LCC, Valuair — with the Valuair brand being retained until 2014, and only for Indonesian routes. Initially it held a lot of promise, and yet, throughout its 20-year existence, Jetstar Asia never operated a single A320neo or A321, and never expanded outside the 9V-JS registration series. The A320ceo (mostly without sharklets) was the only aircraft type it ever operated, and even then only in small numbers, never crossing 20 aircraft. That alone should tell you tons about how 3K was crippled by both the Qantas management and the local playing field at Changi Airport, which heavily favoured the incumbents Singapore Airlines and Scoot — formerly also SilkAir and Tigerair — at the cost of 3K, which was owned 49% by Qantas and 51% by local firm Westbrook Investments. 

This is in great contrast to Jetstar Japan (GK), which has been a roaring success, with the backing of local giant Japan Airlines in addition to Qantas — both Oneworld partners. GK is to JAL what Peach is to ANA: the short-haul LCC specialist based at Narita Airport outside Tokyo, with ZIPAIR Tokyo being JAL’s widebody LCC operator. GK has steadily expanded its fleet and market share, also inducting three A321LRs from the Australian parent. At least 3K lasted much longer than two other Jetstar-branded airlines: Jetstar Pacific (BL) in Vietnam, which ran for over a decade, and Jetstar Hong Kong, which never launched.
(Jetstar Pacific was a joint venture with flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, and dropped the Jetstar brand in 2020, rebranding to Pacific Airlines — only to more or less cease operations in 2024, alive only in name. Jetstar Hong Kong, a joint venture with China Eastern, was doomed from the get-go and never got off the ground.)

Meanwhile, 3K was badly battered by the pandemic, and while it operated 18 A320s before, its postpandemic fleet in 2022 was initially only 7 A320s before growing slightly to 13. Besides big cities in the region like Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila, plus holiday destinations like Phuket and Denpasar, 3K was known for serving offbeat destinations like Haikou (HAK) and Wuxi (WUX) in China, Broome (BME) in Western Australia, Okinawa (OKA) in Japan and most recently Labuan Bajo (LBJ) in Indonesia — but Vietnam remained a hole in its small network. But the airline could not compete effectively with the homegrown colossus that is Scoot, and did not see the kind of expansion that other LCC subsidiaries like Thai AirAsia and Batik Malaysia did.

Yet it had a special USP, codesharing with full-service airlines: not only Qantas and other Oneworld airlines like SriLankan, but also the Air France–KLM group and Emirates. (Indeed, 3K was the only Qantas Group airline to serve Kuala Lumpur!) However, even this was dealt a heavy blow when Changi Airport Group (CAG) effectively forced it to shift to the physically disconnected Terminal 4 in October 2022, destroying its transfer model that thrived on Qantas, Emirates and AF/KL flights at Terminal 1. This is in stark contrast to most other low-cost airlines at T4 — think AirAsia, VietJetAir, Cebu Pacific, Jeju Air and the like — which are fully independent LCCs without any other airline’s ownership, and have zero codeshare flights for that matter.

It was only after much kicking and screaming that 3K finally agreed to move to T4 in March 2023. This, to me, was the final nail in the coffin, and not even a sexy, peppy new inflight magazine — Where Next?, launched in March 2024 (published by Ink no less!) — could save 3K from being folded.

The closure of Jetstar Asia Airways means that Singapore Airlines and its subsidiary Scoot are the only airlines based in Singapore. Let that sink in for a moment. The SIA Group’s domination of Changi is complete.

With this elegy done, let me get to the actual report itself: an early-morning flight to Manila, continuing to Osaka!

Pre-departure: Terminal 4, pretty but disconnected

Saturday, 3 May, 4 in the morning/night. I’d set the alarm at an ungodly hour of the night, which in any case would be required for this 6am departure. To my pleasant surprise, I’d received an email from the Student President of IIM Bangalore — and this before even formally accepting admission there. This was a grand achievement, in no uncertain terms!

In half an hour I got dressed, cloed my single suitcase — mostly empty, in order to stuff gifts from Manila — and ordered a Gojek cab. Living a bare 10 minutes away from Changi Airport is something that I’ll never take for granted again, with IIM Bangalore (and my parents’ home) no less than 1 hour 45 minutes, at best, from Bengaluru’s airport 45 km away!

As a Toyota Corolla Axio sedan approached, I took sweeping pictures of my room, as I often do before and after such trips. The car itself was fitted with an aftermarket audio system with funky animations showing its features, which I was more interested in during the ten-minute whoosh to Changi than the view from the windows — there wasn’t much to see at this hour!

There were two Jetstar Asia aircraft in the sky at the time. One was on the late-night 3K763 sector — on the same SIN–MNL leg as mine (though this didn’t continue to Osaka like mine did) — and the other was 3K791 en route to Okinawa (OKA), 3K’s other Japanese destination and the only one served nonstop from Singapore.
There was also another once-weekly flight from Osaka, 3K796, that had landed some hours back and operated only on Fridays.

This aside, most of the recent landings at Changi at this hour were either from China* — of which a large proportion was Scoot — or IndiGo flights from India, apart from US-Bangla Airlines from Dhaka. (Below: 6E1001 from Chennai and 6E1005 from Bengaluru, both in Southern India.) IndiGo is especially fond of landings between 2am and 5am for its Southeast Asian flights, which is absolutely brutal for passengers — as I flew in September 2023 (never again)!

Before I knew it, we’d taken a right turn and reached Terminal 4, the smallest and newest terminal at Changi. In a trice, I got down along with my suitcase and wheeled it inside the terminal. No security check involved at all — you can’t say that at Indian (or Philippine) airports!

Inside, I first got a baggage tag from the automated Jetstar kiosk, then proceeded to drop it at the bag counter. Little did I know that this would be the final time I’d ever see Jetstar Asia signage at check-in!

At the same time, I was mighty interested in the new signage that Korean Air (KE) had introduced after its big rebrand in March 2025, as it prepared to accept passengers for the KE648 morning flight to Seoul/Incheon. The SkyTeam founder-member is one of two major full-service airlines at Terminal 4 — not counting Mainland Chinese airlines like Hainan — alongside Oneworld co-founder Cathay Pacific (CX), which I’ve flown from T4 a couple of times and which also has its own lounge at T4. (Neither KE nor any other SkyTeam member has its own lounge at Changi.)

I was very, very impressed at the top-to-bottom transformation that KE had undergone, revamping its entire branding and typography to conform to a highly Westernised approach. Cathay Pacific was so far the only Northeast Asian airline to Westernise its brand (and astoundingly well at that!) — as I’ve said time and time again in my previous CX reviews — and other Northeast Asian airlines like ANA, JAL and Asiana are okay at best in this regard, with some, like EVA Air, failing miserably. This is probably my favourite airline rebrand in a long time, narrowly beating even Saudia and Air India from 2023!

And CX itself? The picture of sophisticated, quiet elegance, with its signature teal-green counters and minimalist text in a much smaller font than KE (first row below)… it shows just how much Cathay has benefited from its British ownership, which well and truly reflects in its ‘eCXeptional’ brand identity.

I wouldn’t be flying any of those airlines today, but rather a low-cost carrier owned by another stalwart of branding and typography excellence: Qantas. And while Jetstar’s Singaporean unit will soon be no more, its pleasing, cheerful low-cost attitude — in stark contrast to the irritating tone of Singapore Airlines-owned Scoot — will continue in Australia and Japan.

T4 is Changi’s only terminal with a centralised security checkpoint, which most other Asian airports have. With the glowing, glitzy decorations suspended from the ceiling being even more glam at this hour of night, I proceeded into the duty-free maze without any hassle whatsoever.

There were a bunch of upcoming Jetstar Asia departures (including Emirates and Qantas codeshares), and some more on AirAsia and VietJetAir on the one hand, and CX and KE on the other. There were also a handful of random Mainland Chinese airlines, like Tianjin Airlines — which I’d see at the gate — and its parent Hainan Airlines, with another HNA airline, West Air (as I noted above), having landed an hour before.

Terminal 4 at dawn: A Burger King and Indian students on a joyride

After the post-immigration/security duty-free maze — à la Bengaluru’s new Terminal 2 — the space opened out into the towering Terminal 4 atrium, which wasn’t exactly a happening place at this early/late hour.

It’s nice that instead of having to go all the way to the G18–21 gates at the far end of the terminal — which is the case when flying Cathay Pacific from Changi — I could simply take a right and reach my gate, G9, where 3K769 to Osaka via Manila was about to announce boarding. I had a brief look at the nosewheel registration, and my heart dropped a bit when I saw the letters SL.

So this was 9V-JSL, the exact same A320 that I’d flown in July 2023 on my first Jetstar Asia flight — which meant this was a repeat registration… damn! This meant that both of my flights on Jetstar Asia were on 9V-JSL, and I don’t particularly enjoy having to fly the same registration twice, all the more so because I wasn’t planning to fly 3K again. (And now I will never have the chance to fly any other Jetstar Asia aircraft, because the airline itself is shutting down…)

At the gate I saw an A320neo (B-32FL) of Tianjin Airlines — one of a dozen airlines belonging to HNA Aviation — operating flight GS7964 to Guiyang (KWE) in the southern province of Guizhou. It’s no surprise that several Chinese airlines serve Terminal 4, including Hainan Airlines and its subsidiaries Tianjin and West Air, plus Juneyao Airlines with its 787-9s from Shanghai.

With little else to do, I went back into the retail/restaurant area and headed upstairs to the so-called International Food Hall, where I went for the safest choice: Burger King. That’s exactly what I’d done nine months prior, from this very terminal — though before immigration — in August 2024 flying Cathay Pacific to Bangkok via Hong Kong.

I wasn’t too interested in experimentation with unfamiliar things, and wolfed down the slightly expensive (S$12) but familiar Spicy Chicken King meal.

When I returned downstairs to the gate some fifteen minutes later, I was surprised to find a group of ten-odd Indian youths (I’ll assume university students) — well-heeled boys and girls all of them — chatting together in Hindi. Initially I felt a bit envious of them, because the concept of planning a trip together — to a place as unfamiliar to Indians as Manila, no less! — with your buddies ran counter to my introverted nature and solo-travel fondness. Not to mention, they were from moneyed milieus, evident from their South Delhi/Bombay accents and their attire.

But I reminded myself that I’d covered much more ground across Asia in three years of flying, on my own dime — and would be headed to Japan the very next week (on Asiana Airlines’ A350 and A380!!!) and Taiwan later that month. Would these guys be able to do much more than a few quick weekend trips? Different strokes, different folks…

In any case, repeat registration aside, I was more or less buoyant as I entered the A320, which had the somewhat older Jetstar.com titles from the early 2010s. While I knew that I wouldn’t be stepping on a 3K plane in the near future, I certainly didn’t expect Jetstar Asia to shut down within just a few months… Rest in peace, buddy! 😥

The flight: Boarding and departure

Flight: Jetstar Asia Airways 3K769/JSA769
Date: Saturday, 3 May 2025
Route: Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN) to Manila–Ninoy Aquino (RPLL/MNL) — the flight continued to Osaka Kansai (RJBB/KIX)
Aircraft: 9V-JSL, Airbus A320 — no sharklets
Age: 13 years 9 months at the time (built: 12 July 2011, delivered: 2 August 2011)
Seat: 29F (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 5:25am SGT/PHT (UTC +8)
Departure: 6:05am SGT/PHT
Arrival: 9:20am SGT/PHT
Duration: 3 hours 15 minutes

Notes:
• Second and final flight on Jetstar Asia Airways, given that the airline is shutting down on 31 July 2025. The first was a very short late-night hop (3K688) from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore in July 2023 — on the very same aircraft, 9V-JSL — which was preceded by an Ethiopian Airlines 787-9 fifth-freedom flight in the reverse direction just a few hours before.

Sadly for me, both flights (this and the one in July 2023) were on 9V-JSL, so I could not get a new registration for my flight log — and now I never will! 😢

• First visit to the Philippines, which was the biggest country in Southeast Asia that I hadn’t visited so far. (See spoiler for some details on how the Philippines and India are finally starting to boost travel between each other.) Moreover, the Philippines is a highly English-speaking country — like India and Singapore — which gives it an advantage over Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, etc. when getting around.

For some odd reason, Jetstar Asia was still in a Chinese New Year mood, because the boarding music was all gong-xi-fa-cai all the time. As  I proceeded to my assigned seat, 18F, I realised to my horror that the gang of Indian students was occupying the seats and rows right beside me! Now these guys, and especially girls, would fill the three-hour flight to MNL with their incessant chatter, and since it was all in Hindi — and not Chinese, the usual language I tend to hear on such flights — I would understand every single word of it without wanting to.Just great! 😣

Not that I really hated these folks, for they were Indian after all, and barely a few years younger than me. But suddenly I swung from having to grin and bear it, to inwardly jumping for joy, because one of the girls — with her pretty, fair face, round glasses, designer tee and jeans (let’s call her Meghna*) — made the offer of the year:

*Meghna is not a misspelling of Meghan, but a common girls’ name in India.

Meghna: One of my friends is sitting all by herself. Would you like to trade seats with her?
Me: Sure, I’d love to. Where is she sitting?
Meghna: She’s in 29F, all the way at the back of the plane.
Me: That’s lovely! I love sitting at the back anyway. Please call her up here and enjoy your flight together!
Meghna: Thank you so much! :) Thanks a lot! (Emoticon added for visual effect.)

Everyone was happy with the exchange: Meghna because she got to sit with her friend; the friend (who also wore glasses) because she got to enjoy a window seat with her buddies; and — above all — me, because I was as pleased as Punch to get away from the chattering girls and head to the back, where I love to sit anyway. Oh, and did I say that 29F was a window? Meghna, visibly grateful, repeated her ‘Thanks a lot!’ and ‘Thank you so much!’ and smiled as I collected my bags and moved to the rear.

When I got to 29F, another pleasant surprise was waiting for me: AN INFLIGHT MAGAZINE — published by Ink Global no less!!! Apparently Jetstar Asia had introduced its bi-monthly Where Next? magazine in March 2024, some months after my previous flight with them in July 2023. As is the norm with Ink — as I’ve seen on Ethiopian and Malaysia Airlines — the tone of voice is perfectly informal, the articles vibrant, the people young and creative, the design clean, the fonts highly Westernised. Jetstar Asia was already impressing me much more than before… not to mention, even Cebu Pacific — which I’d be flying the next night back to Singapore — has its Smile magazine by Ink as well.

UPLOAD BIGGER IMAGE AFTER IMGBB IS UP!

On the cover was Jakarta, Southeast Asia’s biggest city, which is much more known for its stifling traffic and pollution than a centre of cool and chic. Honestly, I think Bangkok (and Thailand in general) is grossly overrated as a tourist destination, while other Southeast Asian cities — both megalopolises like Jakarta and smaller, hipper cities like Phnom Penh — don’t get the due they deserve.

As it turns out, unfortunately, this would be the last-ever issue of the Where Next? magazine because of the airline’s shutdown in July… I’m glad I could grab this when I could!

Presently, First Officer Glenn made his welcome, and then the (male) lead cabin attendant, whose name I didn’t catch, made his. All announcements were made only in English, and most of the crew (both cockpit and cabin) were local Singaporeans — barring two young Japanese women, Yubi and Akari, who would serve those continuing to Osaka.

As soon as the clock struck six, the A320 showed up on Flightradar24, though it took some time and a couple of attempts before it did. I might add here that when I’d flown this exact aircraft on my previous (and first) Jetstar Asia flight, I’d complained that the legroom in 28F was tight (which I usually don’t) — yet this time the legroom in the row immediately behind wasn’t an issue in any way. Another yay!

It wouldn’t be long before 9V-JSL taxied past a couple of other silver-and-orange A320s, and hurtled towards the runway, before carrying me up and away, over Singapore’s bright night lights and to a country I’d always been looking forward to visit.

All the more so since there are so many Filipinos in Singaporean software projects like mine, and Singapore is one of the few places where Indians and Filipinos work together in large numbers — the two rarely cross paths otherwise!

Let’s pretend this airline is going to last for years!

Or so it seemed when I leafed through the peppy, youthful magazine, firmly convinced that no matter how small its size, Jetstar Asia would find a way to stick around and fight it out. How I would be proved wrong in just a month’s time…

In any case, the article on Jakarta’s up-and-coming culinary scene was proof enough of this magazine’s serious travel-inspo credentials, short-lived though it was. (Full resolution here.)

The Indonesian capital was especially noteworthy for me because, in a month’s time, my final departure from Singapore would be to Jakarta — that too in Singapore Airlines’ 777-300ER First Class (booked with miles)… Not to mention, this involved a trip to The Private Room, SQ’s exclusive lounge for its own first-class passengers, excluding other Star Alliance first-class passengers like Lufthansa, Swiss and ANA.
(From Jakarta, I continued to Bengaluru on SriLankan Airlines via Colombo, with the CGK–CMB leg being in Business Class on the A321neo — also booked with miles.)

It couldn’t have been more memorable!

As far as 3K’s destination network was concerned, most routes were within Southeast Asia, save for Colombo (CMB), Sri Lanka; Osaka (KIX) and Okinawa (OKA), Japan; Haikou (HAK) and Wuxi (WUX), China; and Broome (BME), Western Australia. My flight, 3K769 was one of the two flights to Japan — though of course it wasn’t nonstop from Singapore, going via Manila. My photo caption mistakenly mentioned that this was 3K’s only flight to Japan — I should’ve said mainland Japan, rather than the Ryukyu Islands where Okinawa lies!

Less impressive, though, was the Club Jetstar subscription programme, and at S$48 per year it wasn’t exactly cheap. After all, you aren’t realistically going to save more than a few dollars here and there, not if you stay away from splurging on add-ons after the fact…

Regardless, the cheery bright orange of Jetstar coloured every page, and made it so much better than the on-the-nose irritation of Scoot. Too bad Scoot, awful as it is, will be Singapore’s only low-cost airline going forward — with Tiger Airways/Tigerair, Valuair and now Jetstar Asia all having given up the ghost… (Full resolution here.)

Shortly Akari and Odelia — the Japanese and Singaporean flight attendants respectively — came around with a children’s meal, drawstring bag and activity book that I’d specifically preordered online. The meal itself wasn’t too noteworthy, consisting of a croissant, a cupcake and a carton of Hershey’s chocolate milk: it was decent and served the purpose. But that wasn’t why I’d ordered these things! You’ll come to know below…

Outside, the sun was beginning to rise over the sea spanning the stretch between Vietnam and Malaysian Borneo, as we headed towards the second-largest archipelagic country in the world — after nearby Indonesia.

Here’s a look at the buy-on-board menu in the broad light of day, with prices (in SGD) marginally more expensive on board than they were on the ground during the booking process. But the highlight, of course, was the holiday-themed drawstring bag and especially the children’s activity kit, which consisted of an activity book with games and puzzles, a postcard with a toy Jetstar plane to colour in, and a box of four (just four?) crayons.

Needless to say, I’d ordered them not only to delight the inner child in me, but also to get a taste of Jetstar’s cool kid-themed avgeek stuff — including talk of Airbuses and Dreamliners. And what a decision it turned out to be!

Returning to the magazine, I pored through Kuala Lumpur’s new-gen hospitality hideouts — young and hip all of them were, like their founders — and leafed through locals’ insights on Colombo, Sri Lanka; Medan, Indonesia; and Broome, Western Australia… in addition to my destination for today, Manila. (Full resolution here.)

Bear in mind that with the closure of Jetstar Asia, the Qantas Group will no longer serve Kuala Lumpur — this being the biggest Southeast Asian airport QF doesn’t serve (it does serve MNL, though) — in spite of being the base of Oneworld partner Malaysia Airlines. And QF doesn’t get along especially well with MH, or Cathay Pacific for that matter, though at least MH is not a sworn enemy in the same alliance like Qatar Airways…

All too soon, it’s time to say Mabuhay

I spent the next hour and a half dozing — what else would one do, having woken at four in the morning? — with the window shade closed. When I woke up at around 8:50 local time, I was treated to my first views of the Philippines: a grey-blue sky and a carpet of clouds above, a boundless ocean and the odd green island below.

At this point, with the captain and lead flight attendant having announced preparation for descent, I decided to fill in the first few pages of the children’s activity book with details of all my travels to new countries — the Philippines, Japan (via South Korea) and Taiwan — upcoming for the month of May 2025. (Full resolution here.)

Of course, this being a low-cost carrier with only the standard A320 tray table — not the newer ones with slimline seat pockets — I had no choice but to stow it away for descent.

Make no mistake, this was the biggest month EVER in my flying history! Four new countries, eight new airlines (though Philippine Airlines wasn’t initially on the agenda; you won’t see it below)… And it all started with an airline that would cease operations barely three months later, at the end of July!

(Another of these airlines, Asiana Airlines of Korea, was high on my wishlist for two reasons. One, I’d booked myself on both the A350 and the A380 the following weekend to Tokyo via Seoul/Incheon; and two, this Star Alliance member will no longer exist in a couple of years’ time — like Jetstar Asia — when it’s folded into Korean Air.)

At a quarter past nine we were on final approach to Ninoy Aquino International Airport. NAIA, as it’s known, is the much-derided capital airport of the Philippines — often ranked among the world’s worst airports (in stark contrast to Changi, almost always the world’s best!) — but has a convenient location right beside the city of Makati, the most urbanised and well-developed part of Metro Manila.

Too bad not every Asian city has a close-by airport, with some airports, like Kuala Lumpur and Seoul/Incheon, being particularly far off… For that matter, there’s another (much, much nicer) airport that (kind of) serves Manila, but it’s awfully far — and that’s Clark (CRK), some 80 km northwest of MNL.

At 9:20, 9V-JSL skidded to a stop, with not much to see at first on the runway. It was only when the A320 turned a corner that I could see at close quarters the near-duopoly of Cebu Pacific (5J) and Philippine Airlines (PR), each with their fleet of A320/1s and A330s — with Philippines AirAsia (Z2) being very small by comparison. This reminded me of the much bigger near-duopoly of IndiGo and Air India (Express) back home, though Cebu Pacific is only but a fraction of IndiGo’s gigantic size.

A pair of 5J A330-900neos stood in the near distance, and an Air Canada 777-300ER was parked at a nearby hangar, having landed as AC17 from Vancouver some hours ago. Indeed, Manila is the only Southeast Asian city other than Singapore to have significant nonstop service to North America, with MNL being served by both United and Air Canada in addition to the local Philippine Airlines’ US and Canada flights.

(The only other Southeast Asian airport with US service is Ho Chi Minh City — on Vietnam Airlines to San Francisco — while Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta have none, though BKK does have Air Canada service. However, United will launch service to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City — both via Hong Kong — in October 2025.)

But there were also some small aircraft amid these big beasts, operated by regional airlines that I’d never even heard of. One of these is AirSWIFT, which operates ATR 42s and 72s and was recently acquired by Cebu Pacific.

At length we taxied to Terminal 3, which is what many if not most international airlines at MNL use — in addition to being 5J’s international base. In a trice, the people started to get up — including the Indian boys and girls some rows in front (mercifully I didn’t have to deal with Meghna and friends again) — and shuffled towards the exit door.

I waited a bit for the crowd to thin, and gathered my bags and belongings, before standing up and stepping out of a Jetstar Asia A320, 9V-JSL to be precise, for the second and final time.

Maligayang pagdating sa Pilipinas!

The first thing that I noticed on entering the terminal was that all signage was only in English — no Tagalog. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an airport in East Asia that doesn’t write signage in the local language besides English — and, in most cases, Chinese, given how massively important that language is. Apparently the Philippines can afford to write everything in English, though, which shows just how well its people can speak the language compared to many other Asian/ASEAN countries.

Anyway, the dull and drab corridors (just as I’d expected them to be) were spiced up a bit by an exhibition on Filipino traditional arts and culture adorning the walls on the right side that welcomed travellers to the country. However, pretty though it was, it was already in disrepair, with faded lettering and missing exhibits in some places. That goes to show how poorly the upkeep at NAIA has been, earning it its infamous worst-airport-in-the-world reputation…

But the exhibits, when present, were a fascinating insight into Filipino art, culture, history, tradition and — yes — jeepneys. Have a look at the intricate, colourful exhibits below:

At length, the exhibits stopped and the corridors became more boring on the right, with ads and then duty-free stores, but now sported windows on the left. One showed a big Qatar Airways 777-300ER that’d arrived an hour ago as QR934, and in the background a Cebu Pacific A330-900neo was taxiing — after a two-hour delay — as 5J929 to Bangkok.

These were some of the aircraft on the ground at the time: a healthy mix of domestic RP-C aircraft — mostly from the A320 family, but also the odd A330neo, ATR or Dash 8 — and foreign arrivals, mostly from Asia but also Air Canada and Qatar Airways.

At the immigration counters, Braza, a female officer, initially had to check with a colleague if my Singapore employment pass was valid to enter the country. After some to-and-fro, she flashed a warm Filipino smile (as my photo caption states) and said, ‘Welcome to the Philippines!’ Having worked with Filipinos in Singapore, I know only too well how welcoming and embracing they are — but the same obviously can’t be said of their capital airport, which is as sterile (if not as old or small) as Colombo’s Bandaranaike Airport!*

I went down a level to the luggage carousels, where some Cathay (not Cebu) Pacific staff were stationed, and picked up a stray CX baggage sticker from an unoccupied desk. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long for me to get out of there…

*That said, I don’t quite hate MNL as much as I do Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport. BKK, being a massive Southeast Asian hub much more than MNL, has outright horrendous décor that’s a crying shame for the gateway to one of the most tourist-visited countries in the world.

MNL, on the other hand — despite being much worse maintained overall than BKK — didn’t really anger me like BKK does, because I knew all about it going in. If anything, it was as humdrum and forgettable as the airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City that I visited in December 2023.

The arrivals hall was filled with tall ads for Teleperformance (wonder what that is?) on the pillars. With my traveller eSIM connected to the Globe 5G network — bought thanks to Pelago, Singapore Airlines’ attractions and travel experiences app — I quickly booked a Grab car.

The exterior of the airport was as I’d expected: bang in the middle of tall constructions, which you don’t see with airports located outside the city proper like Changi, BKK or KLIA. The Grab pick-up point was in a basement car park. Presently, a chocolate-brown Suzuki Ertiga MPV turned up: a common sight back in India.

As I usually do in left-hand-drive countries when travelling — though never in right-hand-drive ones, where I’ve mostly lived and worked in — I hopped into the front passenger seat. A Sheraton here, a row of Cebu Pacific tails there, and we were on our way to my serviced apartment on a busy thoroughfare in Makati.

The radio was playing P-pop songs, and one of them had a tune so catchy I had to summon Shazam to recognise it. As it turns out, this was by girl group Bini, which has rapidly shot up the popularity charts at home and abroad. Apparently they’re the Blackpink of the Philippines or something?

Airports (however bad) near the city have their plus points too…

It sure was an interesting sight to see so many 5J planes on one side, and tall buildings making up the Makati cityscape on the other. That’s something you only get with airports close to the city — DPS, SGN, PNH and now MNL (plus FUK in Japan the following week) being the ones I’ve visited in East Asia.

That’s in contrast to airports far, or otherwise isolated, from the city, including distant ones like KUL, BKK, CGK and HKG — plus NRT and TPE, which I visited later that month — and relatively closer-by ones like SIN, HAN and (also in Japan) HND.

There’s a bit more in the Travelling Bonus at the end, but I’ll share one more picture now as it pertains to the flight: my filled-in Jetstar activity book — along with a map of all the cities I’d travelled to so far. And, of course, the new destinations across the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan (plus a bit of South Korea for transit) that I’d be visiting that month.

I feel bad looking at all these games and puzzles now, because clearly Jetstar Asia put in a lot of effort in making budget travel from Singapore accessible for 20 years… alas, it was not to be! 😢

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