1.

Cebu Pac insists cancellations due to operational issues

Budget airline Cebu Pacific told government investigators that manpower issues such as
absenteeism and poaching of its crew were not the cause of a recent wave of flight
cancellations that affected thousands of passengers

In the hearing yesterday, Cebu Pacific executives claimed the cancellations were due to
operational issues that were affecting the timing of its flights, Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB)
executive director Carmelo Arcilla said in an interview.
“We asked them point blank about manpower issues but they denied it,” said Arcilla, who
added that the CAB was seeking additional information and that another hearing was set for
next week.
“Cebu Pacific said it was about their on-time performance,” he added. “It’s still too early to tell
and there are still a lot of questions to be answered.”
A Cebu Pacific spokesperson declined to comment as the CAB had already begun its
investigation.
Arcilla said the airline called the cancellations necessary to improve its on-time performance.
Based on industry standards, a flight is on time if it leaves within 15 minutes of the scheduled
departure time.
On-time performance fluctuates and typically drops during the peak summer and Christmas
travel periods, in part, due to congestion in busy hubs such as the Ninoy Aquino International
Airport (Naia).
Cebu Pacific recorded an average on-time performance of about 67 percent last year,
information on its website showed.

2. Reports on the current state of the Cebu Pacific Airlines facing the issues

*To address all these issues, Cebu Pacific said it has already implemented several measures,
such as activating a disruption management team, increasing live chat agents, and improving
policies and processes for disruption handling and communication.
“We acknowledge that these actions may still be insufficient for affected passengers, and we are
actively managing the situation and assessing how we can provide better care during this
recovery period,” the airline said
Like Cebu Pacific, flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) said it is also struggling from the same
global supply shortage.
“We do confirm that like Cebu Pacific, our operations are affected by the global supply shortage
that is currently ongoing,” PAL’s vice president for legal affairs Ma. Clara de Castro said during
the same hearing.
In fact, she said, the past several weeks had been “most challenging” for PAL as they have more
aircraft now on unscheduled preventive maintenance at a time when travel is at its peak during
summer season.
“We are not offering any excuses. We are fully aware of the inconvenience to our passengers
kaya humihingi po kami ng sinserong paumanhin sa publiko, sa aming mga pasahero (so we
sincerely apologize to the public, to our passengers),” de Castro said.
PAL nevertheless assured the public that they will continue to work “in order to bring our
operations to normalcy and to extend to our passengers what is expected of Philippine
Airlines.”

Action Plans Recommended to solve the Issue

* “Flights Cancellations in Cebu Pacific Airlines”

The solution we can recommend to the management and operational issues the Cebu Pacific airline
faced is to airlines try their best to execute operations closer to the planned timetable and this can be
done by carrying out Disruption management wherein it is a decision-making process taken by the airline
to minimize the consequences and impacts of operational disruptions and this can be done in two (2)
ways which are the following:

Schedule recovery – it is a reactive form of intervention made by airlines to return the operations to
their normal schedule. It is usually applied in the events of disruptions in the original aircraft routing,
crew pairings, and even passenger itineraries. These are some of the following techniques that Cebu
Pacific can apply in schedule recovery:

 Cebu Pacific should reroute their aircraft and/or crew to operate other flights.

 Cebu Pacific should use additional/reserve crew to operate and avoid exceeding crew work limits.

 Cebu Pacific should transport crew as passengers (deadhead crew) who will operate flights out of other
airports.

 Cebu Pacific should Generate an updated flight schedule

 Cebu Pacific should reroute their aircraft to operate the updated flight schedule.

 Cebu Pacific should allocate crew who will operate to the rerouted flight schedule.

 Cebu Pacific should design new itineraries that will ensure the arrival of disrupted passengers to their
intended destination.