THE management of Philippine Airlines (PAL) on Monday warned former employees against staging protests in front of the PAL Inflight Center building which hampers the flow of PAL’s business.
“If they are sincere in helping the airline, I urge them to cross over and sign up with the service providers. Instead of engaging in forms of harassment and attempting to block entrance and exits of a PAL facility, they should channel their energies into helping the company in its transition period,” PAL president and COO Jaime Bautista said in a statement which appeared on the company website.
He said PAL’s service providers — SkyLogistics Philippines and SkyKitchen Philippines — have begun accepting more applicants from outside after PAL’s retired workers did not join the two companies.
Over the weekend, the PAL Employees Association (PALEA) urged management to delay the airline’s spin off/outsourcing until such time the court rules on the union’s petition for certiorari and to absorb them into the workforce anew.
PAL rejected the offer, stressing that the airline’s non-core units have entered the operational jurisdiction of the service providers. “If they truly want to help the company, they can start by recognizing the spin off and consider working for SkyLogistics, SkyKitchen and SPi Global,” Bautista said.
Meanwhile, Bautista said “PAL is slowly returning to normalcy… From the current 70%, the airline’s flights will be back to pre-strike levels in the next few weeks.”
PAL Holdings, majority owner of the airline, said it expects to post a net loss for the first half of its fiscal year due to soaring fuel cost, the anemic travel market, and lingering effect of the US Federal Aviation Administration downgrade from Category I to Category II of the country’s aviation industry. The latter has barred PAL from mounting additional flights and using larger aircraft to and from the United States since 2008.
PAL suffered a net loss of $10.6 million from April to June this year on account of higher fuel prices—its biggest expense item—and political unrest in the Middle East.
“It is possible that we may post a net loss for our entire fiscal year but it is also possible that we may recover,” Bautista said.
Photo by Marc van der Chijs
