Cebu Pacific gets serious on environment issues

It was my good friend, Charles Lim who invited me to Manila to attend the launching activities of Juan Effect by Cebu Pacific Air (CPA) together with the Department of Tourism (DOT) at the Makati Shangri-La where we met with CPA’s Lance Gokongwei and DOT Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat. Since Charles Lim didn’t want to preempt CPA’s launching event, we didn’t know what to expect when we got into Manila.

We started on Monday by checking the new Savoy Hotel, which is just a short walk from its sister hotel the Belmont Hotel and these are new hotels located just in front of the Resort World Center and right across the Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). The Belmont Hotel is where the crosswalk is located where you can just stroll into the NAIA Terminal 3 for your flight. With Manila traffic becoming like Cebu traffic, it is better to stay in a hotel close to the airport so when your flight date comes, you won’t get delayed.

After meeting Mr. Lorenzo Tang (a Firenze or one who is from Florence, Italy), area manager of Belmont and Savoy Hotels, we drove to the CPA Headquarters to check the Customer First Investment, called Customer Command Center. This was one of the few times that Cebu Pacific allowed the media to visit this facility. I guess it was because it just celebrated its one-year in operation and customer centers, as sensitive like this, has to be carefully checked for verifications especially that we live in the world of fake news these days.

But this facility gives you an idea that Cebu Pacific has gone to great lengths to meet the demands of its passengers, many of whom are linked to the Internet or social media networks. Jackie Lou de Paz, director of the Command Center, gave media a lengthy talk about what the facility can do and has done. While she was speaking, my mind went to those times when Cebu Pacific had passenger complaints, and that this is now the perfect facility to create in order to answer those complaints.

Director de Paz pointed out that when they get a complaint, let’s say through Facebook, there are personnel (they have 50 people in the facility at any given time 24/7) who immediately handle the complaint and, chances are, all complaints are processed within minutes the complaint is received. The most common complaints are about flight delays, which are not due to the airlines, but due to problems in the airport.

How things have changed since the advent of instant communication became a reality in this country. As an ex-ample, our flight to Manila was given by the Manila Tower its best time to leave Cebu… thus we had to stay 30 minutes longer in the tarmac so that, when we left Mactan, we would be given a direct route to land at the NAIA in Manila… rather than in the past where the planes had to be rerouted and diverted for 30 minuets flying over Luzon wasting precious fuel. Thus we left at the exact time that the Manila Tower informed our pilot and the flight went smoothly and landed at the NAIA runway. With the Cebu Pacific Command Center operational 24/7, you can be sure that your complaints would be handled professionally by people hired to handle these matters.

Tuesday noon, we went to the Makati Shangri-La to meet with Cebu Pacific’s top officials led by its president and CEO Lance Gokongwei and vice-president Candace Iyog. This was the official launch of the Juan Effect together with Tourism Secretary Romulo-Puyat who listened to Lance Gokongwei say: “As Cebu Pacific aims to fly 22 million pas-sengers in 2018 we recognize sustainable tourism as a key priority for the airline. The Juan Effect program is a call for all stakeholders to come together, collaborate and cooperate towards concerted efforts, to ensure that tourism industry pro-gresses sustainably. We are continually reviewing our operations to see where and how else we can reduce our impact on the environment.”

Basically it was Cebu Pacific’s call to change its old ways and not to use current plastic spoons and forks on their flights and shift to bio-compostable cutlery something that Cebu Pacific aims to do with the help of its passengers to teach them to become environmentally conscious travelers.

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