Chicago Flies Manila Nonstop From Next Monday

Philippine Airlines, the Philippines’ flag carrier, starts nonstop Chicago O’Hare–Manila next Monday, November 9. Flight PR133 is scheduled out of O’Hare at 10:45 p.m. and into Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) at 5:25 a.m. two calendar days later, after the date line. The return, PR132, leaves Manila in the late afternoon and reaches Chicago the same afternoon, local time. Both flights run Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays on an Airbus A350-900.

Chicago becomes PAL’s eighth point in the United States and its territories, after Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Guam, and Saipan. The airline last flew the city in the 1980s. Tickets have been on sale since April. The first airplane is six days away.

The nonstop is three nights a week. The Midwest feed is every day.

Richard Nuttall, PAL’s president, said Chicago gives the airline a Midwest door and a path into Philippine domestic markets through Manila. The Chicago Department of Aviation’s April note made the same case: O’Hare already gathers travelers from across the Midwest, and Manila can send them on to Cebu, Palawan, Boracay, and Davao, or to cities including Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, and Shanghai.

The traveler who gains the most can reach O’Hare on a short hop, wants Manila without a West Coast or Tokyo stop, and can travel on the Monday–Wednesday–Friday pattern. Filipino families in the Midwest get a direct homecoming that used to mean San Francisco, Los Angeles, or a one-stop on another carrier. A trip that continues to an island the same day can work off a 5:25 a.m. Manila landing if immigration and the domestic terminal change cooperate. Leave margin, and check which NAIA terminal the next flight uses.

Four days of the week have no Chicago–Manila nonstop. If your dates fall on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday, you are back to a connection—often via San Francisco, Tokyo, or Taipei—unless you shift the trip onto a PAL night.

A one-stop can also win when the fare is lower, or when you already live on the West Coast or near New York where PAL already flies. The nonstop is long: about sixteen hours and forty minutes westbound. A shorter Pacific leg plus a clean hub can feel easier even when the calendar runs longer.

Price the Monday, Wednesday, or Friday nonstop if O’Hare is your natural gate and Manila—or a same-ticket onward from Manila—is the point. On every other day, keep shopping the one-stop. The old connecting map stays useful; the new flight just adds three nights to it.