Breaktime: Crime does not pray

Last Monday morning, the management of the country’s flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) held a crucial meeting. The airline was trying to address the disruption in its operations due to the closure of the airport in Davao City Sunday night.

To my mind, what the PAL management decided to do—with complete disregard for the huge costs that the decision entailed—should be the blueprint that companies must adopt for customer service.

A nighttime Cebu-Pacific Air flight missed the runway upon landing, leading to the closure of the entire airport for about 48 hours. The delays of about 100 flights in and out of Davao for two straight days could only be expected to incense the public.

That Monday morning, the PAL management explored ways and means to ease the trouble the airport accident caused the riding public. From what I gathered, PAL president Ramon S. Ang, who is also vice chair and COO of San Miguel, took control of the meeting. The main question was, what could PAL do for the thousands of booked passengers for the Davao route.

For two long torturous days, as the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) allowed everybody to take their sweet time in clearing up the runway—apparently in a desperate move to save the multimillion-peso Cebu-Pacific aircraft—PAL had to take care of more than 7,400 passengers for some 50 flights on its Manila-Davao route. Just imagine the cost!

Supposedly, Ang did not hesitate to go for the full service that a so-called legacy airline like PAL, by definition, was always known to provide its passengers. He first ordered for food to be offered to passengers, knowing perhaps that a hungry human being would be the last thing anybody would want to deal with.

From what I gathered, the PAL management decided to resume flights to Davao via General Santos City. For the thousands of PAL passengers, this entailed a three- to four-hour motor ride on not-so-perfect roads. And so Ang ordered his people to find all the buses that PAL could rent in both Davao and General Santos—OK, specifically “air-conditioned” buses. As I said, it would be a three- to four-hour ride.

PAL also opened more counters at both airports in Davao and in Manila to speed up the check-in process for the thousands of angry passengers, in effect, breaking up the chain reaction of delays that the mess in Davao created for the other domestic routes of the flag carrier.

With the huge additional costs of the crisis measures, PAL even waived the rebooking charges for its passengers on the Manila-Davao route, which could have helped PAL defray those costs.

PAL, as any flag carrier in any other country, can only be a full-service network carrier—known in the transport business as “legacy” airline—which by definition must pay attention to all sorts of pre-flight and onboard services.

There is a certain prestige to being a flag carrier like PAL. As a full-service network carrier, an airline like PAL must always provide “connecting” flights.

Low-cost carriers, or the so-called budget airlines, try to lower its operating costs mainly by stealing portions of the market from legacy airlines through lower fares. And so budget airlines often try to manage their routes to cut on fuel costs.

Cebu-Pacific is such an airline. One could only wonder if Cebu-Pacific should have done what PAL immediately did for its passengers: Pay the price by offering customers a bit of convenience.

Based on the reactions of passengers, it took Cebu-Pacific a long time to react to the emergency. Reports said that a Jesuit priest, Joel Tabora of the Ateneo de Davao University, already called for a boycott of Cebu-Pacific, citing the “insensitivity” and “ineptness” of the airline.

Perhaps the priest and other passengers had reasons to complain. At 10 o’clock on Monday morning, Cebu-Pacific had yet to issue a statement to the public, particularly to those affected by the accident in Davao. Not a word was heard, or received by text or e-mail or phone call from Cebu-Pacific spokesperson Candice Iyog, nor from its high-priced media consultants who must have been busy with some other corporate crises.

But the truth is, in the highly competitive world of airlines, where safety standards and emergency drills are close to being a religion, sensitivity and competence—as demanded by the passengers of Cebu-Pacific—do cost a lot of money.

As I said, by definition, budget airlines try to cut costs in order to reduce the fare. And I pray that the cutting of costs among businesses—precisely to benefit consumers—would not be considered a crime in this country anytime soon.

Referring to the incident, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte said that the local government “will submit a complaint to put on record [Cebu-Pacific’s] nonexistent emergency plan.”

The Davao city government also called for an investigation by the CAAP of the management of the Davao airport. She reportedly wanted heads to roll.

Now accidents do happen. It is just that, in the corporate scene, there is such a thing as criminal negligence. Its more dreadful counterpart is gross negligence—a corporation’s wanton disregard for human life, also known as corporate manslaughter. Airlines and shipping lines are always open to such charges.

Recently, a man was found guilty of criminal negligence—i.e., causing the death of people—in connection with the disaster involving the ferry Queen of the North that sank in Europe some years ago. The authorities concluded that the accident was caused by “human error.” A court decided that the man who was found guilty of criminal negligence (for which the sentence is imprisonment) failed to follow procedures.

CAAP deputy director-general John Andrews reportedly told media that the Cebu-Pacific accident was probably due to human error. Reports nevertheless noted that a similar case of “human error” caused a Cebu-Pacific plane to overshoot the runway at the airport in Puerto Princesa City just a couple of years ago.

Nobody in this country—whether owners or executives of any corporation—was ever charged with criminal negligence.

And the M/V Doña Paz incident still haunts us.