Phillipine Airlines to temporarily suspend flights on certain sectors
Phillipine Airlines announced that it will be reducing the number of selected domestic and international flights for a limited period as the flag carrier prepares for the transfer of its catering, ground handling and call center reservations units to third party service providers on October 1, 2011.
It has disclosed that the number of domestic flights would be temporarily reduced by about 30 percent while international flights would be cut provisionally by 12 percent. The international destinations to be affected by the flight frequency reduction are Hong Kong, Bangkok, New Delhi, Macau, Singapore, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Guam, Sydney, Melbourne and Incheon (from Cebu).
The airline plans to refund the money for people travelling on the affected flights by setting up special counters in Manila or through the respective Travel Agents. In my opinion this move is not going to go down well with the affected people, given that the airline is losing its market share to the Low Cost Carriers like Cebu Pacific and Qantas subsidiary Jetstar and to other full service rivals like Singapore Airlines, such moves will trigger further exodus of passengers.
No doubt that the outsourcing will help the troubled carrier cut down on costs but better planning and mangement for such a move would have really helped. The press release by the airline can be found here.
On trip on Phillipine Airlines was enough. Although not recently, it was memorable as a Never Again experience. The aircraft was filty, the FAs not much better and the meal on a very long flight was probably the worst ever presented. It’s a wonderful ifea to promote national cuisines on flag carriers, but when the local nationals won’t eat it, there is good reason for others to avoid it as well. Phillipine Airlines is an Avoid-at-all-cost airline. Outsourcing should help them a lot, but they should be able to maintain their schedule during the change. -C.
I know and totally agree with you, PAL’s reputation has gone downhill in the recent time, they are having big trouble retaining customers and maintaining decent load factors on their flights, specially when airlines line Singapore Air are offering them tough competition in the full service segment and LCC carriers like Cebu Pacific and Jetstar hitting their revenues big time they really need to get their act together and i hope outsourcing the non core activities should act as a step in that direction but again what really needs to be seen is to how they manage the change.
Gone downhill in recent times you say? I recently flew a couple of sectors with them out of desperation, having avoided them for more than 15 years. I can say with some authority that they are even worse now than they were 15 years ago, which is really saying something. Food, double seat assignments, the list went on. Take a schedule change, but avoid at all costs!
Except for the Middle-East state owned carriers rest all suffer from the same mismanagement, with PAL the process has been accelerated due to the presence of so many good quality airlines around, there are still lessons to be learnt from all this and if PAL can make this outsourcing a success surely things should turn up for the best.