PAL's Getting There

Malaya

Saturday, December 5, 1998

Dahli Aspillera

PAL sales and marketing VP Avelino Zapanta was on Jay Sonza's radio program. I'd lost track of the latest on PAL. Happy to learn that with or with­out Northwest and Cathay, our flag carrier flies.

All's well that ends well. Al­ways had, and always will have keen interest in the underdog in­dustries of the Philippines, of which PAL is part. Filipino serv­ices and products are more ma­ligned, more than multination­als which have enormous ad budgets. Their proclaimed vir­tues (truth or lies) are accepted household facts. Through inter­national media, "Fly Us" (not PAL).

My readers know that I have made a personal campaign to pa­tronize strictly Filipino. I'm one of few natives who will patron­ize Filipino over foreign. I shop Filipino to use abroad.

Here, I choose indigenous groceries, household supplies, appliances, etc. I'll move from store to store to find my local brands vs multi­national brands. Every little bit helps. Old scrapbooks where I stick tourist mementoes — hotel bills, airline tickets, post cards — show my partiality to patroniz­ing PAL in my decades of exten­sive travel.

From the Sonza interview, it sounded to me like Northwest and Cathay were negotiated for their sole advantage. The stick­ing point was Cathay's conditionality to retrench two-thirds of PAL's 8,000 workforce.

To this, President Estrada and Lucio Tan counter any retrench­ment is not timely...it is a crisis situation, and we had promised (PAL) employees that there won't be that kind of downsizing.

What a benevolent promise. This is one statement that few employees will hear from a leader of the likes of Japan. There, employees will be surprised some morning with an installed robot replacing dozens of employees.

I wonder if PAL employees are cog­nizant of how fortunate they have President Estrada fighting for their jobs. In these days of company closings and hungry ex-employees, those with jobs bet­ter be on bended knees in grati­tude for such presidential con­cern.

PAL’s talks with Northwest and Cathay may come to naught, but no big deal. Mr. Zapanta: "They preferred to put their in­vestments elsewhere. We can't blame them." With Cathay and NW out, Sonza asks: "Is PAL closing?"

Paraphrasing and translating Zapanta's replies: "PAL is not closing. Government and PAL have a public commitment to continue with its service. Begin­ning October operations, PAL’s been doing very well. Every week, we start new services, and now in operation in the Middle East. I'd been reviewing the loads. December is doing very well. If this continues and the good services and on-time per­formance maintained, we continue positively. If Filipinos will continue PAL patronage, we're headed for better days and brighter future. No drastic ex­pansion yet, just happy to main­tain what we're doing. When all routes are well patronized, we'll look into expansions and other products and services.”

"For additional capital, this can be resolved through a reha­bilitation plan. We are now op­erating on cash positive. We are able to collect for direct operat­ing costs of the planes. Where we hurt are the obligations stem­ming from back then. We have to show creditors that we are re­structuring. We're submitting our rehab plans to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday."