Cheap but costly

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

So where, now, is Cebu Pacific in this?

As we are seeing what could be the tail-end of the controversy between columnist Ramon Tulfo and couple Raymart and Claudine Barreto, it is a question worth asking.

After all, it was CebuPac which had caused all this celebrity ruckus and it should have faced up to the problem. Sadly, the matter spawned many other issues, including the grave – human rights; and the most unlikely -- child abuse. In between, there were issues of censorship, press freedom, and airport security.

Instead of turning on the heat on the budget airlines, we turned our attention on Tulfo and his brothers and the Santiagos. But for the mother of one of the airline attendants, who demanded apology from the showbiz couple, nothing was heard from CebuPac, and it seemed to have simply vanished in the screaming headlines.

Which is sad for all of us who must endure the budget airlines’ insensitivity. From the sketchy reports we read about its side, we learned that the airlines’ policy for off-loaded baggage was for the immediate assistance of P1,000 per bag left behind to compensate the aggrieved party. Now we know. The next time it happens, I hope this assistance is given immediately without the passenger having to scream at the airline counters.

Good Friend G, who once said he was on board a CebuPac flight that got delayed, said you have to complain, and complain hard, before they even give you a meal. G told me that after reading that piece about a delayed flight where they sold noodles on board to those who got hungry because they failed to keep to their schedules. You have to complain, G said, before they act on the misery you are suffering on their account.

All throughout the Tulfo-Santiago blame game on national media, I couldn’t help but think: what if that off-loaded baggage had belonged to an overseas Pinoy worker who wasn’t as articulate and as tart-tongued as Claudine? Would Tulfo have gone out of his way to take a photo? Maybe. Would CebuPac, on its own, fork out the P1,000 per bag assistance? Hmmmm.

Clamming up seems to be the reflex action of the airlines. And acting only when things start reaching the boiling point appears to be its policy. I don’t know. But to find logic in that, it seems to be a good way to keep the bottom line big: do not act, so you do not spend, unless it is very, very necessary. Do not give meals unless the hungry passengers on delayed flight demand them. Do not even entertain complaints so you do not spend time and resources on things that do not impact on profits.

You can ask where public service is in this scheme of things. It’s not there, because all there is to CebuPac is giving you supposedly cheap fare, to get you around cheaply. That means doing away with the niceties, but it seems along the way it also has done away with some necessities like meals on delayed flights.

But one needs to examine closely that proposition about cheap fares. I just tried booking online for a P1,700 one-way ticket to Manila, which was the cheapest rate available; after the add-on charges, the ticket was something like P3,400, more expensive than the published rate of another airline. Among the add-on charges, by the way, was P80 for its website administration – it is charging us for the upkeep of the system from which it makes money! I dropped the booking.

Cheaper can sometimes be very costly, see, as Raymart, Claudine and Mon must have realized by now.*

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