Sunday, June 15, 2008 Lim: Clear the air By Melanie T. Lim Wide Awake
EVERY passenger understands that not every flight can fly on time. Every passenger understands that for reasons beyond anyone’s control like inclement weather or technical failure where their safety and security are compromised, an airline may elect to delay, divert, cancel or reschedule a flight.
When an airline cancels a flight four weeks before its scheduled departure, it’s clearly not because of paranormal powers that can predict future inclement weather or engine failure. If technical problems truly beset the airline, it is obligated to fix its problems so that its planes can fly as scheduled. It’s a wimp’s way out of a business bind to cancel a flight at the expense of innocent paying passengers.
Still, when flights are unavoidably cancelled or rescheduled, the airline should put displaced passengers on the first available flight out of ANY airline without delay, expense or inconvenience to the passengers.
The offending airline should not FURTHER inconvenience passengers by letting them wait for hours without explanation, making them incur additional expenses for food and accommodations and worse, asking them to pay rebooking charges when they are displaced by a flight reschedule.
Cebu Pacific’s usual solution to the mess it always finds itself in is to offer passengers a refund. Well and good if they pay cash on the spot. But those who pay with a credit card are often told they can get their refund only in three months. I know people who have been waiting for more than a year for their refund.
Cebu Pacific has also offered free tickets as compensation for a flight cancellation. Be aware, though, that a free ticket is not actually free. Before rejoicing, understand that after shelling out thousands of pesos for taxes, you will find that often, you have actually received only P1 from Cebu Pacific for all your troubles.
For many of us, however, getting on the FIRST AVAILABLE flight to our destination and WITH OUR LUGGAGE is more important than free food, accommodations and flight coupons which may turn out to be worthless especially if you never want to fly with this airline again.
Why do airline companies get to charge us a “no show” fee when we don’t show up for our flights but we don’t receive “no show” compensation when their planes don’t show up? Why is it that airline companies get to bump us off when we don’t get to check-in at cut-off time but all we get is the run-around when they fail to board us at the time printed on our boarding passes?
Why is it that it takes the airline only a matter of seconds to charge our credit card for an online transaction yet it can take more than a year or never to get a refund on that very same transaction? Why do we need to pay to rebook our flights when the very reason for the rebooking is because the airline has cancelled our original bookings?
Cebu Pacific should clear the air not taint the skies with half-truths, cowardly silence or brazen invites to lunch. If you don’t have the balls to face your passengers, you have no business being in business.
