Cebu Pacific promises friendlier skies

Inside a war room of sorts within Cebu Pacific’s sprawling Airline Operations Center in Pasay near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), agents, perhaps with bated breath, are glued to giant monitors that show the airline’s social media accounts.

Their job is to monitor complaints, requests and other concerns from customers – and to respond to these avalanche of posts – as soon as possible.

Welcome to Cebu Pacific’s Customer Care Center, a 24/7 office dedicated to responding to the budget carrier’s millions of customers – whether they are fuming mad, frustrated or happy with the airline’s service.

To an outsider like me, the war room seems dizzying and chaotic but for the carrier, it is a testament to its commitment to step up its game by being more focused on its customers than it was ever before.

“I think the focus on doing the really important things has gone up... As a business, we’re now more focused on customer aspects than we ever were,” said Michael “Mike” Szucs, CEO of Cebu Air Inc.

Philippine STAR colleague Elijah Rosales and I are inside the company’s command center with Scuzs and his team, president Alexander Lao, CFO Mark Cezar, VP Candice Iyog and spokesperson Carmina Romero, learning about Cebu Pacific’s initiatives.

It’s my first time to meet Szucs and as I told him, I’m happy to finally meet “the famous Mike,” because I’ve long heard about his excellent and strategic leadership in different global airlines and in CEB itself.

Szucs, a licensed pilot and a veteran airline executive armed with an aeronautical engineering degree, knows the aviation industry like the back of his hand.

During our meeting, however, he acknowledged that the industry – and the rest of the world – have been seeing dizzying and challenging changes.

“And that is where I would characterize it... despite the enormous challenges everybody in every walk of life is facing at the moment – such as the enormous unpredictability – we have put in the focus on going above and beyond what we have done before,” he said.

Horror stories

Thus, learning its lessons from a barrage of horror stories from customers in recent years which triggered a Senate investigation last June, Cebu Pacific has made significant steps toward improving its service.

Customers’ complaints ranged from delayed flights, overbookings and off-loading of passengers.

Senator Nancy Binay, chair of the Senate committee on tourism who led the Senate investigation, said her office alone was able to compile some 3,000 complaints against Cebu Pacific.

The nightmarish stories flooded social media, although not every reason was attributable to the airline itself; some were due to airport congestion and global supply chain issues concerning airplane spare parts, etc.

I myself personally experienced the hassle not once but many times in the past but not just from CEB but Philippine Airlines, too.

But Szucs said Cebu Pacific has heeded the lessons and is doing everything better now.

The goal, he said, is to get people to their destination in a way that is “comfortable, safe and on time with great customer service.”

“And extremely affordable,” he added.

Measures

As part of its improved measures, Cebu Pacific has increased its number of live agents tasked to assist customers 24/7 by almost 25 percent.

The carrier has also re-emphasized its First Contact Resolution policy among its passenger-facing personnel such as ground personnel at counters, and encouraged them to effectively address and resolve passenger concerns upon initial contact.

Air Passenger Bill of Rights

In addition to the prevailing mandate to provide the minimum requirements under the Air Passenger Bill of Rights, Cebu Pacific’s passenger-facing personnel have the authority to provide additional assistance and amenities, i.e., hotel accommodations and transportation allowance, in instances where flight disruptions are attributable to the airline.

Following the Senate hearings last June, Sen. Binay has lauded Cebu Pacific after the airline announced that it would be removing the expiration date of its travel fund and extending its travel voucher validity to 18 months starting Aug. 1.

Moving forward, Cebu Pacific is confident it would continue its financial and capacity growth in 2024, with its system-wide network forecast to exceed 100 percent of pre-pandemic capacity in the fourth quarter of this year.

Cebu Pacific raked in revenues of P23.3 billion for the third quarter, up 39 percent year-on-year and 23 percent above the same period in 2019.

With this, net income grew to P1.3 billion, a turnaround from last year’s net loss of P2.5 billion as well as the third quarter 2019’s net loss of P384 million.

For its fleet, the company expects to have ten aircraft grounded in January, with the number rising through 2024 to 20.

But the company has put in place substantial measures to mitigate any effect this would have on its customers, including a short-term wet lease of two aircraft from Bul Air, a charter company of Bulgaria Air.

Lao said the Bulgaria Air jets may be used for daily flights from Manila to Cebu and Davao.

Finally, Cebu Pacific expects to receive before the end of the year the proposals from suppliers after issuing Request for Proposals (RFP) to both Airbus and Boeing for 100 to 150 narrow-body jets, which represent the largest ever commitment of any airline into the Philippine aviation industry.

There are indeed a host of measures from CEB now to give customers a better flying experience and ultimately, be a much improved airline.

I’m personally looking forward to the improvements.

Whether or not these measures will satisfy the increasingly discriminating taste of the Filipino traveler, however, remains to be seen.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter  @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen (Iris Gonzales) on Facebook.