National Flag Carrier

Malaya

Wednesday, December 16, 1998

Opinion

By RODOLFO DULA

“It is a great and incredibly endur¬ing myth that tourism and trade have thrived in our Asian neighbors because of their Open Skies policy.”

IN AN ideal world, national flagcarriers would serve no more purpose. Indeed, in the globalized order which many now equate with that world, they would be downright anachronistic if not anomalous.

For then the traditional boundaries between nations shall have effectively disappeared. Formerly independent states will have been altogether subsumed by regional blocs modeled after what's now being called Euroland, each with a single cur-rency and common economic goals, policies, systems, and standards. And eventually even once sovereign political impera¬tives and interests would yield to a regime of free trade supervised by the WTO, wherein each bloc will enjoy equal and unlimited access to the resources and mar¬kets of all the others.

Thus civil aviation, for one, will be totally liberalized and completely deregulated. With all countries subscribing to an "Open Skies" policy, there will be no more air rights to protect, no more traffic sectors or routes to hus¬band for security or commercial reasons,. Any carrier could mount as many flights as it wants and can to any country and airport around the globe, regardless of the make, age, size or capacity of the equipment in its fleet.

Just imagine: Philippine Air¬lines will be flying to every major U.S. West Coast and Midwest City several times daily, either nonstop or via Tokyo, Osaka, and Taipei while servicing the East Coast through Rome, Frankfurt, Paris, and London, picking up passengers there as well as in Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. And Air Philippines, Cebu Pacific and Grand Air with scheduled land¬ings in all primary and secondary cities of Asia and Australia and the Middle East capitals.

Will it happen? Yes, but maybe only after Northwest, United, Delta and every other American airline shall have been allowed into any port of their choice on the Chinese mainland; and every for¬eign and local carrier now dock¬ing in Manila, Cebu and Davao also starts regularly operating on our so-called missionary routes. This is to say, probably never.

For all the talk about parity, most countries today remain as jealous as ever about their air space. And the bigger and mightier they are - the more stra¬tegic their location, the heavier the volume of passengers and cargo in and out, the larger and more important their own civil aviation and tourism industries - the tougher on the competition.

Airliners, in fact, do not nego¬tiate routes and frequencies with one another. It is governments that do so in their behalf, always making sure that their own interests aren't prejudiced, and trying to load bilateral agreements with terms and conditions that are to their advantage.

The United States is a prime case in point. Due mainly to vast¬ness it may never have had a na¬tional flag carrier in the proper sense of the phrase, but acquiring landing rights there is like pull¬ing teeth. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, and if the applicant is also seen as a client state or an unequal partner there are bound to be riders to the permit sought, usually in the form of commitments to purchase US-made planes, airport equipment, and navigational and security systems.

Likewise, it is a great and in¬credibly enduring myth that tour¬ism has thrived in our Asian neighbors because of their Open Skies policy.

There is no such thing. Thai International and Singapore Air¬lines still have the run of Don Muang and Changi Airports, respectively. The same goes for Cathay Pacific at Chek Lap Kok, especially now that it’s reverted to China.

It's just that being natural re¬gional hubs, foreign operators who must do business with and have enough warm bodies to feed to Asia are perforce willing to ex¬tend similar concessions to the aforementioned airlines in their own turfs. Otherwise each party is just as protective of its national flagcarrier. The name of the game is still quid pro quo, I scratch your back and you mine.

We, too, have a national flag carrier. PAL in fact began serv¬ing in that capacity since 1941, carrying both the name and the flag of the Republic long before most of the others came on the scene. It has not always been in the best of shape, and today its future couldn't be cloudier. But through turbulence of every sort it has flown continuously, in the process contributing immensely to economic growth, to domestic and export output as to income and employment for tens of thou¬sands directly and millions indi¬rectly.

Philippine Airlines has what no other local airline has or can match in the foreseeable future: a national and global network of routes, a staff of veterans, an or¬ganization with a marketing, technical, financial and physical infrastructure that is truly national in scope. Certainly it can be replaced, but we'll have to wait another two or three decades for anything of the same stature and capability.

PAL's home base is here; as such its commercial and financial success is entwined with that of the country. But to foreign carriers the Philippines is merely one of many stopping points, and can be dropped when it suits their busi¬ness interests. Clearly it has the biggest stake, so boggling is the zeal of some to accord others the same rights and advantages our own airline doesn't anywhere else.

All over the world it is the most consistently visible of Phil¬ippine ambassadors. Every one of its aircraft stands as a national symbol, its markings a source of pride to Filipinos abroad. For that alone there should be no question about its entitlement, not to cod¬dling or anti-competitive protec¬tion, but to the policy and admin¬istrative support every government must give any corporation of its country striving for a niche in the global marketplace.

Otherwise we do not appreci¬ate the meaning of a national flag carrier, and thus neither do we deserve one.