LAST Tuesday’s (June 4) piece in PN about flight delays did not tell us very much. Apparently, the Civil Aviation Board (CAB) has instructed Cebu Pacific (CEB) to submit a “corrective plan” aimed at preventing flight cancellations. Is there any reason why this plan is not publicly available? Since we are the ones who suffer when things go awry, it is reasonable for us to understand the factors which cause delays and cancellations.
For example, if some flight cancellations happen because two underbooked flights have been lumped together to make one fully booked flight, then this is unacceptable and warrants CAB’s excoriation of CEB. It must be publicly agreed by CEB that this will never happen in future.
Public Relations (PR) professionals tell me that adversity often provides good PR opportunities. CEB has been uncharacteristically quiet. Now is the time for the airline to tell us, as well as CAB, what the airline is doing to improve on-time performance (OTP). Firstly, we need a clear definition as to what constitutes OTP. Internationally, I believe OTP means arrivals within 30 minutes of the scheduled arrival time. Does this apply to domestic flights in the Philippines as well?
Compared to many airlines, CEB’s operational requirements are a scheduler’s nightmare. It has many flights with a flying time of well under an hour. Then there is the vexed question of how long should be allotted to the tasks of cleaning, refueling, and reloading the aircraft for the next flight. If this time is, typically 45 minutes, and if the airline schedules allocate less time than this, then we are unlikely to maintain a satisfactory OTP, particularly when an aircraft has to undertake many flights per day.
CEB had a bad spell between April 28 and May 10 when there were many cancellations. Since May 10, anecdotal evidence suggests improvements. One family member who travels regularly between Iloilo and Cebu has experienced an OTP of 50 percent on CEB flights after May 10. Not bad but not good, particularly when one delay was 2.5 hours.
As customers, we are basically on-side with the airline. Without relatively inexpensive flights, then family visits for those working far away (typically Manila or Cebu) would be much less frequent. Surface transportation is impractical for weekend visits.
Let us have a more open dialogue with CEB. It has been too reticent recently.
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Huawei
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned the Philippine government against partnering with Huawei due to accusations that it could facilitate spying for the Chinese government. US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim says the allegations are ‘very serious’. Yeah. We know that. What we do not know is whether the allegations are well-founded. The US is lacking details to support its allegations.
On the other hand Huawei’s CEO, Ren Zhengfei, denies the allegations. We would expect him to do so but Ren’s denials are, to this writer, believable.
In the Philippines, Karrie Buenafe, head of Huawei’s PR division, says that Huawei would cooperate with the Philippines’ security forces and authorities in any investigation of Huawei.
This transparency is welcome./PN
