Herrera-Dy points to ‘systemic mismanagement’ within the airline

By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

Bagong Henerasyon partylist Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy yesterday called for penalties against budget carrier Cebu Pacific after the airline abruptly cancelled 158 flights between yesterday and May 10. In a statement, she said there can be no other reason except “systemic mismanagement” as the cause of the cancellations.
“CAAP (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines) [should] be well within its powers to impose a stiff fine against Cebu Pacific for disrupting the lives of 9,000 Filipinos and their families,” she stated. “What about those who have already booked their hotels or those who were forced to go absent from work, how does Cebu Pacific intend to compensate them?”
In response to airline spokesperson Charo Logarta Lagamon, who earlier claimed, “Wala kaming choice kundi kailangan munang magbawas ng mga flights para po maibalik, mai-restore ‘yung network sa normal (We had no choice but to reduce flights in order to restore the network to its normal state),” noting, “Wala namang iisang root cause ang mga problema na ito (There is no single root cause for these problems),” the legislator dismissed it as “excuses.”
“Aircraft maintenance is a complex process because of the civil aviation safety and operations issues involved so for something like this to happen now means several senior and middle-level managers failed to do their jobs,” she explained.
The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), meanwhile, assured they will look into the cancellations.
“We are now in the process of evaluating the incident and [determining] the circumstances that led to this,” explained CAB executive director, Atty. Carmelo Arcilla. “We draw the line between as to whether the cancelation is attributable to the airline or beyond the control of the airline.”/DGB, WDJ