Never mind that bilateral air negotiations between the Philippines and Qatar will only start this Wednesday, with no terms discussed yet. Qatar Airways, according to our source, has already started selling seats equivalent to 14 weekly flights effective March 2009 — three more than its current frequency allowed by the Civil Aeronautics Board.
On top of selling more flights, our source tells us that the Qatari airline is also selling more seats than its currently allowed capacity for Airbus A340 aircraft (up to 275 seats). The number of seats it is selling indicates that it intends to use a Boeing 777, which can accommodate from 335 to 434 passengers per flight — all while the negotiations have yet to begin.
Not a few industry observers are wondering where Qatar Airways is getting the confidence to offer more seats than what it is allowed, even if official negotiations have yet to be held today and tomorrow.
Is the airline simply overeager, presumptuous ... or do they already know exactly how many additional entitlements they will get? Daxim L. Lucas
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Brotherly retreat
After creating a stir in a conglomerate owned by this “taipan” — Chinese-Filipino tycoon — his “prodigal” sibling has hoisted the white flag. According to the Chinese-Filipino grapevine, the taipan’s brother has given up on an earlier attempt to set up a business of his own that would have competed head-on with some of the taipan’s interests (which was widely read as an act of betrayal rather than any actual threat to the empire).
As proof of his retreat and maybe an attempt at restoring family harmony, the brother returned all funds from a popular property project in which units were pre-sold last year.
As the old cliché goes, blood is thicker than water, or in this case, cash (which is also “liquid”). Doris C. Dumlao
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Price of Petron majority stake: $10 million
How can an investor — never mind that it’s the beverage and food conglomerate San Miguel Corp. — take control of a P45-billion, publicly listed firm like the oil refiner and retailer Petron Corp. using only $10 million?
Lawyer Gerry Geronimo wants to know, especially since, he says, some of his Petron minority-shareholder clients are also worried (read: They want San Miguel to offer to buy them out).
Geronimo, a partner at the Romulo Mabanta law firm, says that not only has San Miguel taken control of the petroleum giant with the equivalent of only about P500 million, but it did it by buying only options. By themselves, options don’t entitle the buyer to a direct shareholding, much less to having several representatives on the board of directors. (Of course, only a fool would believe that only P500 million has so far changed hands).
Strictly speaking, of course, the burden of protecting the interests of Petron’s small investors rests not only on private citizens like Geronimo but also on the independent directors — former budget secretary Emy Boncodin and Angelico “Chito” Salud — on the Petron board.
Corporate watchers are waiting to see whether the independent directors or one of them would side with the new masters at Petron or with small shareholders and their thankless cause.
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Zest Air woes
The crash landing by Zest Air’s new MA60 aircraft at Caticlan, the jump-off point to the resort island of Boracay, over the weekend was the latest black eye on the record of the Chinese-made turboprop.
Since its first flight in 2004, the MA60 has been bought mainly by African airlines, including the airline of Zimbabwe, where it had its first “incident.”
Apparently, even Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe avoids taking the airplane. According to one online news report published last year, Mugabe threw a fit when officials tried to put him and his family on an MA60. He ordered Air Zimbabwe to divert one of its B767s to take the presidential party to its destination, making hundreds of paying passengers wait.
From all indications, however, there was nothing wrong with the Zest Air aircraft, which investigators said experienced a phenomenon called “wind shear” just as it was about to land.
Still, Zest Air will have to work doubly hard to improve its planes’ record, especially with some of its critics pointing to the fact that the MA60 has not been certified by aviation authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Daxim L. Lucas
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Planner crazy
Even as some retailers experienced weak sales during the holiday season, a different set of economic laws seemed to be in effect for the local Starbucks franchise.
Owned by Rustan’s Coffee Corp., the chain’s sales remained strong over the past couple of months, thanks partly to its annual Starbucks 2009 planner promo, in which patrons had to accumulate the equivalent of 16 stickers (eight each for regular coffee products and the more expensive “holiday drinks”) over a two-month period that ended last week.
So strong was the demand for the limited-edition planners (you can’t buy them from Starbucks, but there is a thriving secondary market on online auction sites) that supply ran out in late December. Rustan’s Coffee had to have a fresh batch made posthaste and promised that they would be delivered to impatient coffee drinkers by Jan. 16.
And to think, just a decade ago, many Filipinos actually cringed at the thought of paying more than P100 for a cup of coffee. Daxim L. Lucas
With editing by INQUIRER.net
