PAL seen to surpass 10M passenger count this year

Sunday, 12 December 2010 17:51 Lenie Lectura / Reporter
Business Mirror

CARRIER Philippine Airlines (PAL) expects to surpass its 10-million target number of passengers for the year owing to its cheap and affordable fare rates. 

Its president, Jaime Bautista, said on Friday that PAL is “moving to achieve the 10 million” and by the end of the year the flag carrier would have flown more than 10 million passengers from 9.2 million last year.

“Passenger traffic is going to be a little over our target by the end of the year,” he said.
Last year, PAL carried an average of 25,630 passengers per day. This number goes up by as much as 30 percent with the onset of the Christmas peak season as thousands of tourists, balikbayan and overseas Filipino workers flock home to spend Christmas with their families.

Bautista said the market is “improving” as more passengers continue to choose the airplane as a preferred mode of transportation when traveling. “So far, we are doing good. Our revenue enhancement programs are doing well. We continue to offer promo fares. The programs we undertake impact on our revenues.”

PAL posted modest gains of $28.2 million in the second quarter of its fiscal year ending March. Revenues amounted $399.5 million, up by 33 percent from the $299.7 million earnings posted in 2009.
It reported increases in passenger (26 percent) and cargo (57 percent) revenues from international operations, with an improvement as well in the yields generated from passenger seat offerings.
To remain viable, Bautista said the flag carrier will focus on continuing its cost control initiatives as the passenger and cargo markets as well as fuel and maintenance costs remain very volatile.
Last week, PAL announced that it has identified contingency measures in the unlikely event of a work stoppage. 

These include the hiring of professional service providers, including inflight catering companies, to augment workers not joining the strike; deployment all available manpower, including supervisors and managers who are more than capable of manning critical frontline posts;  and endorsement of  affected passengers to its sister-airline, Airphilexpress, as well as 134 international airline partners.
Employees who participated in a recent PAL Employees Association (Palea) strike vote are ground workers assigned at the ground-handling, catering and call center offices.

While their jobs are important, these workers play support to flight operations. They are not directly engaged in flying or maintaining the aircraft. The pilots, cabin crew and mechanics or maintenance workers of Lufthansa Technik Philippines are not part of the planned work stoppage.

The PAL-PALEA labor dispute is currently being reviewed by Malacañang. PAL hopes the union will heed Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa’s appeal to exercise restraint by deferring any mass action at this time and allow the Palace to decide on the case.

PAL said legal avenues can still be exhausted in resolving the management-labor differences. It also assured passengers that all PAL flights are normal and continue to operate according to published schedules.