Cheap Phil Corporations 2: PAL

Philippine Airlines

In the nineties some friends used to joke about the pre-landing announcement of Vietnamese Airlines which went something like this: “Comrades, we are landing, immediately!” It was just the culture and there was no emergency landing by a Harrier jet, or worse, a crash.

More civil airlines usually had and still have much longer and graceful announcements advising passengers of safety regulations and other flight information. But what got my goat was the PAL pilots’ advice that ‘our flying time will take us approximately X hours and Y minutes. Having been the OC I was (and still am), I would write notes on napkins meant for the flight staff saying “either you say ‘ the flight is approximately X hours and Y minutes’ or ‘flight time is around X hours and Y minutes.’ About ten years ago I finally heard the announcement said correctly and wrote a complimentary note to the staff. Just before disembarking, I was approached by the graceful chief flight attendant who gave me a complimentary fruit basket.

But on a recent flight from Cebu to Manila, yikes, the pilot made the dreaded and jarring announcement. As I was conversing with a fellow traveler, I had no time to write but this is what I should have and would have written as a suggestion: ‘Our flight time is sufficient for you, dear passengers, to think of creative ways to torture us ala Jack Bauer, or insult us into speaking correct English.’

In the so-called age of information technology and the alleged productivity and time-saving procedures for customers, PAL gives us the option to reserve and purchase tickets electronically through the internet. But then, after paying by credit card, the airline still requires you to go to a ticket office and secure a hard copy of your electronic ticket. The whole procedure really is moronic.

I remember that in the nineties, way before internet transactions, I could make a reservation by phone, be given a booking number, and allowed to pay by ATM, and use the ATM receipt as the flight ticket at the airport counter. Ahhh, progress is so slow, and sometimes it even goes backward.

But there are some good things to be said about PAL, especially the check-in staff. I was supposed to pay some amount because my checked baggage weighed twice the ‘free’ allowance. But as I was able to espy friends who had some allowance to spare, the PAL staff arranged usage of the excess allowance without incident and efficiently. But the airport check-in computers are so slow you could have a massage while in line.

(Here’s an aside. I told one of my friends that availing of his baggage allowance would have the effect of lowering GDP figures for the year but lead to an increase in human happiness in Philippine society. Think about that and the limitations of GDP as a measure of social welfare. We can be kinder to our fellows and GDP would be lower. And I can think of so many ways GDP can be higher and people poorer. Believe me, I’m a lifelong student of economics).