9. Our flight this morning scheduled at 10:15am left SEVEN hours later.
Need I explain further? At least two aircrafts were down (or so they said), as their announcement goes, 30 minutes before the flight "flight number... is delayed to 11:15 due to the delayed arrival of turn around aircraft." an hour later, same announcement was made and moved the flight to 2:30.
Thereafter, the boarding gate was filled with disgruntled customers with indefinite flight status. The manager on duty never showed up until some passengers went down to their office and demanded for free meals. They were able to negotiate and lunch was served past 2pm. Several flights were cancelled that day, hundreds of passengers were stranded in the airport (the only consolation is they now operate in NAIA Terminal 3). Passengers on cancelled flights got free airtickets (excluding taxes & fuel surcharge), overnight stay and three meals, while passengers on delayed flights for more than 6 hours gets free travel voucher, but we didn't get any simply because boarding announcement was made a few minutes before 6 hours would pass. Boarding announcement was made around 4pm but it doesn't end there.
This is another ordeal with Cebu Pacific, it is such a shame to us Filipinos especially Cebuanos for them deliver such service. During the whole time, I didn't bother to argue with them, the same people who assisted me during my missed connecting flight, was the same person handling us! I tried to haggle with my softest voice for our tickets to be refunded and be moved to PAL to no avail since the manager on duty never showed up to approve my request. So I quiet myself and bought The Secret.
But I couldn't keep my foot down, I went around, eavesdropped and talked to several strangers and shared experiences. Several passengers missed important meetings, several passengers came from Bangkok, their 10pm flight left 4am and were connecting on the same flight as I am.
I befriend the check-in counter staff, had our bags retrieved and had my ticket rebooked to another flight hoping it will leave earlier. Hours later, my original flight's aircraft arrived so I ran back to the counter and had my ticket rebooked again to my original flight. So my checked-in luggage and I were on separate flights, however, my checked-in luggage arrived earlier than me since we were kept an hour more on the plane before it finally left the runway. Sigh!
As we leave the arrivals door, the security guard asked us "you still taking Cebu Pacific?"
I don't exactly know how this will appear on the news, abs-cbn was there to cover it. I hope they will deliver an impartial report, a wake-up call to concerned government agencies to take some action.
I think Cebu Pacific's main problem is that they're overworking their planes too much. The planes fly domestic (and some international) flights during the day, and fly international during the night. So when one aircraft is down, all the flights serviced by that aircraft is affected. Not sure if they have extra aircrafts in case something like this happens, but from the way things are happening, it doesn't look like they do.
ReplyDeleteThe customers suffer a lot (and can you just imagine the opportunity loss for each?), but unfortunately, people still patronize them because of their seat sales (me being one of those)
i'm as guilty as you. They obviously don't have an extra aircraft. A passenger's remark on abs-cbn didn't make it on air... she said "Gokongwei, stop selling tickets if you don't have aircrafts".
ReplyDeletei could just laugh off at my numerous ordeal, but sigh another spoiler.