Summer means fun in the sun. School is over for kids, adults are on vacation and it’s time for outdoor activities. However, one must be cautious because summer is also a peak time for accidents. One must be aware emergencies are just around the corner even though how small they are. It is good to remember that to enjoy summer is to bare safety in mind.

• One of the best ways to stay safe this summer is to wear a helmet and other safety gear when doing rigorous outdoor activities like biking, skating and skateboarding, and when riding scooters, all-terrain vehicles, and horses. Studies on bicycle helmets have shown they can reduce the risk of head injury by as much as 85 percent.

• Use layers of protection to prevent a swimming pool tragedy. This includes placing barriers completely around your pool to prevent access, using door and pool alarms, closely supervising your child and being prepared in case of an emergency.

• When cooking outdoors with a gas grill, check the air tubes that lead into the burner for any blockage from insects, spiders, or food grease. Check grill hoses for cracking, brittleness, holes, and leaks. Make sure there are no sharp bends in the hose or tubing. If you ever detect a leak, immediately turn off the gas at the tank and don’t attempt to light the grill until the leak is fixed.

• Make sure you have a safe surface because falls are likely the cause for playground injuries. Concrete, asphalt or packed dirt surfaces are too hard. Use at least 9 inches of wood chips or mulch.

• To prevent serious injuries while using a trampoline, allow only one person on at a time, and do not allow somersaults. Use a shock-absorbing pad that completely covers the springs and place the trampoline away from structures and other play areas. Kids under 6-years-old should not use full-size trampolines.

• Don’t allow a game of hide-n-seek to become deadly. There have been reports of numerous suffocation deaths involving children who crawled inside old cedar chests, latch-type freezers and refrigerators, iceboxes in campers, clothes dryers and picnic coolers. Childproof old appliances, warn children not to play inside them.

• If summer plans include camping and you want heat inside your tent or camper, use one of the new portable heaters that are equipped with an oxygen depletion sensor (ODS). If oxygen levels start to fall inside your tent or camper, the ODS automatically shuts down the heater before it can produce deadly levels of carbon monoxide (CO). Do not attempt to use alternative sources of heat or power to warm a tent or camper. Traditional camping heaters, charcoal grills, camping lanterns, and gas generators also can cause CO poisoning.

Philippine Airlines will raise up their services to major international and domestic destinations during the upcoming peak summer travel period, highlighted by the upgrading of its Vancouver service to a daily frequency and the addition of flights to local tourist hotspots Boracay and Busuanga.

From March 23, PAL will operate a direct flight to Vancouver every Monday and Wednesday, filling the only two days of the week when the service does not operate.

Unlike the other five days, however, the new service will not continue on to Las Vegas and will operate simply on a turnaround basis.

It injects much-needed capacity into PAL’s Vancouver route, the only direct link between Canada and the Philippines, and has long been sought by the sizeable Filipino migrant community in Canada as well as by the business and leisure segments of the market.

PR 116 departs Manila every Monday and Wednesday at 1:05 p.m., arriving in Vancouver at 10:20 a.m. the same day.  The return service, PR 117, departs Vancouver at 1:00 p.m. and arrives in Manila at 5:50 p.m. the next day.

Widebody Airbus A340-300 aircraft, which seats 264 passengers in a bi-class layout, will continued to be deployed on the route.

The existing five-times-a-week service from Manila to Vancouver, onward to Las Vegas and vice-versa, operated every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, will be maintained.

Meanwhile, PAL will add one weekly flight each to its popular trans-Pacific services to the U.S. West Coast gateways of Los Angeles and San Francisco for the duration of the summer.

An extra Airbus A340-300 flight will operate to Los Angeles every Friday from April 10 to June 19 while another A340-300 flight will serve San Francisco every Sunday from April 12 to June 21.

The additional flights increase total frequency to Los Angeles to ten times weekly and to San Francisco to eight times weekly for the summer.

In the domestic sector, the flag carrier’s low-fares, turbo-propeller unit PAL Express will mount more flights across its network of secondary domestic routes, particularly to island destinations that are huge tourist draws during the summer months.

From March 20, PAL Express will add one daily flight between Manila and Caticlan, gateway to the resort island of Boracay, boosting total frequency on the busy route to 11 flights daily.

On the same day, PAL Express will operate a second daily frequency between Manila and Busuanga, the largest of the Calamian group of islands in northern Palawan that host the country’s most exclusive beach resorts.

The new frequency is an afternoon service that complements the current morning flight.  PR 033 departs Manila at 1:00 p.m. and arrives in Busuanga at 2:05 p.m.  Return flight PR 034 departs Busuanga at 2:30 p.m. and arrives in Manila at 3:35 p.m.

PAL Express will also add two weekly flights between Cebu and Cagayan de Oro to increase total frequency to five times weekly.

Likewise, PAL will augment its regular jet services between Manila and Bacolod, Butuan, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Kalibo, Legazpi, Puerto Princesa and Tacloban with additional flights of varying frequency throughout the summer season.