Thursday, October 18, 2007 So: Air travel By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
DOMESTIC more convenient than now with the availability of flights to far or small islands in the country, which in the time of Lapulapu would only be reached after years of rowing, trekking and bickering over directions.
Travel then was a weight reduction program. One left his place of origin weighing 150 pounds and reached his destination weighing 50 pounds lighter and looking emaciated. One had to be hardy when he traveled because otherwise, he would end up becoming a skeleton halfway through his trip.
Today, travel is fast. And if you’re flying in a 19-seater plane, you need to travel light because you are weighed with your bags when you check in. You will know that you are heavier than the other passengers when the customer service agent seats you in the first two rows. If it’s any comfort, you get more leg room and closer to the pilots.
Because the Seair plane is small—twin seats on one side and single seat on the other—you can almost touch the pilot’s back if you’re seated on the first row. You can even hear the showbiz talk in the cockpit. When everyone is seated, the co-pilot faces the passengers and gives the instructions unaided with a public address device. (In big planes, a flight attendant does that.) I had expected the pilot to serve snacks mid-flight.
No snacks are served. There are no overhead bins to store your bags or in-flight newspapers to read. It’s as Spartan as the boat Lapulapu took to tour the islands. It’s hot in the plane. The plane is not pressurized so it flies low, which gives you a closer aerial view of the islands, islets and sandbars. The whirring of the propellers sends you to sleep. It’s a fun flying experience if you’re not the nervous type.
It’s the kind of flight you take for the sole purpose of reaching your destination quick. It’s far from comfortable but it’s “very safe,” as one former pilot said. It is. It brought me safely to Tawi-tawi from Zamboanga and from Boracay to Cebu, and I was always seated in the first two rows.
And because the plane accommodates only a few passengers and flies to off-routes, the fare is higher than that for Philippine Airlines’ Manila-Cebu or Manila-Davao.
Seair and Asian Spirit, the other airline that flies off-routes, are a welcome addition to the air travel providers. Their accommodations may not be as comfortable as those of PAL and Cebu Pacific but hey, it was much worse in that plane that hid the lavatory with only a curtain and the other passengers heard you peeing.
The budget fares being offered by Cebu Pacific have made more Filipinos traveling within their country. Cebu to Bacolod or Iloilo costs only P98 or just something like P600 inclusive of taxes. Cebu to Davao, Puerto Princesa or Manila costs only P288 or a little over P1,000 with taxes. But because these are budget fares, rescheduling your flight is going to cost you more than what you paid for the ticket.
In budget flights, you don’t get anything free on board unless you win their in-flight games. So when you’re in one and a flight attendant asks you, “Coffee, soda or juice?” don’t make the mistake of choosing one and take it like a privileged guest. You’ll hear the attendant saying, “That would be 50 pesos.” In budget flights, the only privilege you get is being assigned to an exit seat.
Fifty pesos, in Lapulapu’s time, could already supply food for a month for the crew. The Bisdak hero was budget-conscious.
