Philippine Airlines Baggage Allowance: Carry-On and Checked

Each passenger may carry one piece of hand baggage, free of charge, weighing no more than 7 kg (about 15 lb), with a maximum total dimension of 56 x 36 x 23 cm (22 x 14 x 9 inches), according to Philippine Airlines' own baggage information pages. The bag needs to fit in the overhead bin or under the seat in front of you.

That 7 kg limit is meaningfully stricter than the weightless carry-on policies on many U.S. domestic carriers, where a bag just needs to fit the size sizer with no scale involved. If you're connecting from a U.S. flight where your carry-on was never weighed, it's worth putting it on a scale before your Philippine Airlines segment, since a bag that easily cleared a U.S. gate can still be over 7 kg once packed for a longer international trip.

A single piece of checked baggage should weigh no more than 32 kg (70 lb); Philippine Airlines' own baggage information states that anything exceeding that weight must be repacked into a second bag or it will not be accepted for carriage at all, rather than being charged as an overweight bag the way many carriers handle it.

The specific free baggage allowance you get, meaning how many kilograms or how many pieces are included before fees kick in, depends on your fare class and route, and Philippine Airlines' Free Baggage Allowance (FBA) is calculated separately for domestic Philippine flights versus international routes. On U.S. and Canada routes specifically, Philippine Airlines uses a 2-piece system: 2 checked bags, each up to 32 kg (70 lb), for a combined allowance of up to 140 lb (64 kg) across both pieces, with each piece capped at up to 62 linear inches.

Domestic flights within the Philippines follow a different, generally lighter allowance, though it was recently increased on some routes: Philippine Airlines raised the Free Baggage Allowance on domestic turboprop flights to 20 kg for Economy Value and Economy Flex booking classes, an increase from the previous, lower turboprop allowance. Because domestic and international allowances are calculated on entirely separate schedules, check the specific allowance page for your exact route type (domestic versus international, and which specific international route group) rather than assuming one figure applies across your whole itinerary.

This is the detail Philippine Airlines flags explicitly and it catches more travelers than the size or weight limits do: "Each flight ticket has its own Free Baggage Allowance policy that is valid only on that specific flight and may not necessarily apply to your connecting flights." If you're flying Philippine Airlines into Manila and then continuing on a different carrier, or even a different fare class within Philippine Airlines, don't assume your first flight's baggage allowance automatically extends to the next leg.

Philippine Airlines' own guidance is direct about the consequence: "PAL or other carriers may require you to pay excess baggage fees if your FBA entitlement is lower on your connecting flights." In practice, that means the safest approach on a multi-leg itinerary is to check the baggage allowance for every ticketed segment individually, rather than assuming the most generous leg's allowance covers the whole trip.

If you know before you fly that you'll need to check more weight than your fare's Free Baggage Allowance includes, Philippine Airlines sells Prepaid Baggage ahead of the flight, and the rate varies by sector and destination rather than being one flat global add-on price. Buying this in advance is the standard way to avoid a higher excess baggage charge assessed at the airport counter, which is priced per kilogram over your allowance rather than as a flat additional-bag fee on many international routes.

Given how much the specific allowance and the prepaid baggage rate both shift by route and fare class, the most reliable path is to check your exact itinerary's Free Baggage Allowance and prepaid baggage rate directly on Philippine Airlines' site rather than relying on a single number that might apply to a different route than yours.

Philippine Airlines' 2-piece, 32 kg-per-bag system on U.S. and Canada routes is common practice among Asia-Pacific carriers flying to North America; Korean Air, for comparison, also switches to a piece-based system on its own U.S. and Canada routes rather than the pure weight-based system it uses elsewhere. Where Philippine Airlines stands out is its carry-on weight enforcement: a 7 kg cap is stricter than Korean Air's roughly 10-12 kg carry-on allowance and considerably stricter than U.S. carriers that publish no carry-on weight limit at all.

If you're connecting between a U.S. domestic carrier and Philippine Airlines on the same trip, that gap in carry-on weight enforcement is worth planning around specifically. A backpack that never got weighed on your domestic U.S. flight could be over Philippine Airlines' 7 kg limit once you've added souvenirs, electronics, or extra layers of clothing for the international leg, so it's worth weighing your cabin bag before that connection rather than assuming it'll pass a second time.