Elize’s love letter

Elize’s godsister sent an email complaining about the atrocious PAL workers’ strike forcing her to miss her job interviews.

The recent strike of Philippine Airlines workers created a huge backlog. More than 14,000 passengers that were victims of stranding will reclaim their right to their airline seats.

Despite the overzealous attention paid to transcontinental flights such as US-Manila and Manila-US, major obstacles were experienced. The nightmare continues. After the strike was considered called off, these thousands of passengers remained stranded, hoping for openings in PAL’s skeleton flights.

For this to happen to the oldest airline of Asia no less, is really an abomination. It will take more than just days, nay weeks, for PAL to fully get back on its feet again. And things will no longer be the same.

Elize’s godsister’s flight to Singapore could not push through, and she was detained along with more than one hundred passengers inside the aircraft. Godsister told Elize over dinner after her love letter, that she cried for days just because of the missed interviews in Singapore. She said, she was called by her job prospects and told not to pursue the applications with them. She cried for many more days after the calls.

But she didn’t cry because there was nothing she could do. She was crying from the pain of being unable to fly and land at Changi Airport, plus everyone including her was shocked when they were locked inside the plane and no one was there to rescue them from what she called, the hideous reptiles. Oh my!

It will cost PAL more than US 20 Million to get back on track. And another huge sum to repair the damage caused by the strike. This one is more costly since it involves the tears and fractures in the Philippine flag carrier’s international reputation, loss of goodwill, bad public relations, notwithstanding the consistent attacks through media of the workers of PAL and their supporters from the Partido Manggagawa, the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Alliance of Philippine Labor, Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines, the do-gooders in the Philippine political scene including the President’s closest political adviser no less, and many other supposed long-time and sudden enemies of Allied Group of Companies.

All told, US 100 Million would be a measly sum to bail the airline out of its present predicament. With a 77% drop in income as of March 2011 as reported by Reuters, PAL is certain to suffer more waist tightening measures as soon as word about their declining revenues come in.

This comes at the tail end of PAL’s plan to acquire a new fleet of aircraft that would certainly cost a mind boggling sum. If I owned PAL, I’d be thinking hard twice over about a  lot of critical areas before plunging into the new fleet purchase. And that would be opportunities lost, I know. But what could I do if I was at the top of a business that would crumble if I didn’t plug the holes?

Luckless, PAL has to make do with a sordid situation. Faced by legal battles back home and a labor union run amuck, the airline really has to fend for itself, alone, on its own — something that’s scary for its position as national flag carrier.

Surely, a country with stiffer laws and regulations would not suffer the same fate from its airline workers. But that’s democracy in action, and whether its a tough pill to swallow, PAL has just got to go with the flow and its passengers will suffer with them, until they shift their money to other airlines.

At a coffeeshop sortie at the Intercontinental Hotel, I overheard someone say: “What if PAL offers 20 Million pesos to the union leader?”

The response was: “Huh! Ka Popoy will turn in his grave!”

Another responder: “Mali! Someone just nearby will be smiling up to their ears!!!”

I wonder what someone nearby meant? Do you? Perhaps it’s one of Elize’s godsister’s reptiles slithering near Cafe 365 at the Intercon.