Ateneo de Davao president calls for Cebu Pacific boycott

A major local airline has begun drawing flak Monday, not exactly for the recent accident which left one of its planes stuck in a busy airport, but for how it supposedly handled its panicking passengers.

Ateneo de Davao University on Monday said it would recommend a boycott of Cebu Pacific, saying the airline’s personnel “ignored and neglected” passengers after the plane overshot the Davao International Airport runway during a rainstorm Monday night.


“You do not deserve customers,” Ateneo de Davao President Joel Tabora said in a letter addressed to the Gokongwei-led airline. He added that he has instructed the school not to purchase tickets from Cebu Pacific.

This, as Tabora noted that “Cebu Pacific personnel failed to give humane assistance to passengers” after the irregular landing of flight 5J971, even as the engine caught visible fire before coming to a stop off the runway.

“No instructions were given; no calming words were spoken,” Tabora said, adding that airline personnel “froze” and “did not know what to do.”

All 165 people aboard the plane were safe, Cebu Pacific spokesperson Candice Iyog has earlier been quoted as saying. She added that the airline is working with probers to determine what caused the plane to swerve.

Tabora, however, said Cebu Pacific “endangers lives” by putting passengers under the care of people who lack training for emergency situations. “Where was your concern for passengers?” the Jesuit priest noted.

The Ateneo de Davao president also claimed that Cebu Pacific only approached passengers to talk to them only an hour after passengers had been allowed to leave the plane.

“I am incensed not because there was a mechanical failure last night, but because of Cebu Pacific’s manifest human failure,” Tabora said.

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, for her part, thinks the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) should “make heads roll” at the Davao Airport.

“The emergency last night was poorly managed by DIA (Davao International Airport),” Duterte has been quoted as saying, adding that they will lodge a complaint about the airport’s “nonexistent emergency plan.”

Flights to and from Davao remained suspended a day after the accident, CAAP noting that it may take until Monday for the Cebu Pacific plane to be safely removed.

Philippine Airlines has offered passengers stranded at the airport deemed as the main gateway to Mindanao land transfers to another airport four hours away.

article from http://ph.news.yahoo.com/ateneo-de-davao-president-calls-for-cebu-pacific-boycott-111322169.html