An Open Letter to the Public

Manila Standard

Monday, September 21, 1998

I will miss PAL.

But we took her for granted.

We sit down to an early-morning breakfast every day of the year, reading a printing-press-fresh Manila newspaper, did we care to ask how it was delivered to our home'?

We see foreign tourists on the street of our city, we meet and see off relatives and friends at the airport, did we bother to think how they came? We board her aircraft to flights everywhere, confident and secure in the thought that she will deliver us to our destinations in comfort: did we ever look back, when disembarking, to say THANK YOU?

Yes, we took her for granted that she would be there, through weather fair or foul to fly in the food that we eat and the goods that we use, to fly out the merchandise we produce and sell to places everywhere, to ferry us in safety and in comfort to places we wish to go; yes, we took her for granted.

Yes, until June 5 when her pilots struck, and suddenly we remembered her. We remembered her when our morning papers did not arrive for days on end, when foreign tourists disappeared from our streets, when a son, a relative, a friend woke up one morning to find himself without work; then suddenly we remembered her.

I remember being seated, many years ago, in the departure lounge of a foreign airport, gazing out towards the empty runways, lonely and alone among an alien people, when suddenly an aircraft landed, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the word PHILIPPINES in bold letters on her fuselage and the rising sun on her tail, and a sense of pride swelled in my breasts, and I said to myself; there is my country and my flag.

Now, she is limp and prostrate. In a few days, she will be buried...along with it 57 years of unrelenting service to the Filipinos...57 years of national pride to the Filipinos. On September 23, 1998 she will fly for the last time into the horizons.

Today, this Sunday's mid-afternoon silence was broken by the struggling roar and banshee wail of a competitor aircraft's straining to take off, then, suddenly, again I remembered her, and I felt a deep sense of sadness, as if the road and wail sounded a death knell for her, a REQUIEM.

How I will miss PAL!!! Terribly!!!