The Philippines’ flag carrier, the Philippine Airlines (PAL), said on its Facebook page that they will be operating select domestic and international flights today, September 28, 2011. 62 domestic flights and 40 international flights shall remain canceled today.
Only the following flights from Manila will operate today:
DOMESTIC PR847 0600H CEB PR291 0700H DGT PR321 0855H KLO PR811 0900H DVO PR853 0900H CEB PR323 1330H KLO PR293 1340H DGT PR849 1530H CEB PR813 1530H DVO
INTERNATIONAL PR896 0720H TPE PR300 0800H HKG PR438 1330H NGO PR408 1425H KIX PR432 1430H NRT PR306 1450H HKG PR116 1850H YVR PR102 2200H LAX PR104 2230H SFO
This comes a day after members of the ground crew union Palea (Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association) went on a surprise sit-back strike. The employees refused to perform their duties such as facilitating disembarkment of baggage, refuelling aircrafts, checking in passengers, among others.
The employees went on a strike on an attempt to save their jobs. PAL is due to lay off 2,600 employees in an effort to outsource their non-core functions.
PAL, on Tuesday (27 Sept), was forced to cancel all its flights (102 internation, 70 domestic) since the strike started. PAL announced that they will be resuming their operations by 6pm, but had troubles meeting their self-declared deadline as the airline was only operating through volunteers from their administrative staff.
According to their website, they were only able to mount the following flights after the strike: Manila-Davao (PR821); Manila-Kalibo (PR239); Manila-Hong Kong (PR310); Manila-Bangkok (PR732); Manila-Los Angeles (PR102); Manila-San Francisco (PR104); Manila-Jakarta (PR535).
A press release by PAL last September 24 stated that:
PAL is adopting contingency measures during the transition period to shield its customers from unnecessary inconvenience and hassles. We’re not taking any chances. These measures will help alleviate the inevitable minor kinks in PAL’s service as we go though this difficult but necessary transition period.
Despite being equipped with a contingency plan for the hiccups during the transition period, last Tuesday’s events (27 Sept) proved that the airline was not ready for the occurrence of such strike.
PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna said that PAL has decided to implement their outsourcing plan three (3) days ahead of schedule due to the incident. She added that the management has already declared all ground employees off-duty until September 30 with pay.
======================================
Related posts:
[...] The Philippine Airlines is still struggling to return to normalcy two days (2) after the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (Palea) went on a sit-back strike. [...]