Well, after a long and insidious year we finally had the chance to take a short trip to Boracay after Easter. Needless to say in any other circumstances, but extremely relevant for this story, we had bought the plane tickets with a SErtain AIRline whose name I will not mention today (which tickets BTW, were priced at around 200 dollars each) and flew over on Thursday for what it was to become a very enjoying and relaxing holiday. At least until we came back.
Boracay is a dreamy place even for the most finicky of the tourists, with its white sands and blue waters, delightful choice of local and international cuisines, great variety of activities (scuba diving, island hopping, nightlife etc) and fortunately for us, the perfect weather for the last 5 days.
As much as I would like to talk about this superb vacation and maybe, possibly, probably, just because of my pessimistic view of life even, another event made me decide posting this entry instead.
For those who don't know this yet, ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REAL PEOPLE, SITUATIONS AND EVENTS IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL AND MAY BE ATTRIBUTED SOLELY TO THE RAVELINGS OF MY DERANGED MIND...IF I WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONLY PERSON ON THE 144 F***ING FLIGHT, THAT IS!
For the unsuspecting reader, DON'T GET CONFUSED ABOUT MY GOING BACK AND FORTH ON IDEAS, if you read my previous entries you would have got used to it by now.
While making the most of our time at the beach and enjoying the island life for 5 days, I have coincidentally bumped into two good friends who were there on holiday at the same time as us and from our conversation we realized that we were even to return together on the same flight. At the moment I thought "Awesome, we will have some time to have a chat since we haven't seen each other in some time!".
So, we went on with our holiday, visited a few islands, had some great meals at the restaurants stretching all over the beach from Station 2 to Station 3 and even made some nice acquaintances (Tata, the guy who arranged the boat trip for us and the couple with the cool tattoos with whom I've had a conversation on the way to the airport, on return). On our way back We got to the airport just minutes after my two friends and met them when they were already on the way to the Post Check-In area but in passing they told me that our flight was to be delayed and that we were going to fly to MANILA instead of CLARK, our original destination. Oh, I forgot to mention that we purchased return tickets CLARK - CATICLAN - CLARK.
BTW just for the sake of the story, if not for the correctness and exactness of the facts, our flight back was scheduled for 16:40 with arrival at destination port IN CLARK at 17:55 (I may be off 1-2 minutes on the arrival time here). We passed through check-in and met my friends again in the Waiting Area where they have explained that the flight was delayed and we were to take a plane to MANILA instead and from there a bus all the way back home to CLARK.
It, only then, dawned on me that until the moment when they started explaining these details nobody else in or outside the airport had mentioned that to me in any way (meaning nobody from that SErtain AIRline personnel involved in that WHOLE COMPLEX AND INTELLECTUALLY CHALLENGING DEPARTURE PROCEDURE) but I thought that maybe they had announced it before we got there and so I waited for the new departure time set for 17:20. Not surprisingly (and I will tell you immediately why) the departure time came with a new announcement of a delay until 17:55 or so and with the whole set of "We are sorry for the inconvenience blah blah " excuses.
In a truly Proustian manner I reverted back to 3 years ago when I had taken my first flight with this SErtain AIRline to the same location, Boracay.
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It was very early in the morning (around 6.20 initial departure time), the summer breeze was blowing through my hair and the check-in girl announced a delay of approximately 30-45 minutes due to some "technical issues". Then later on a new announcement came in for another delay of 1 hour or so. At that moment in time I was close by to the check-in booth when two middle-aged foreigners (British by their accent) started loudly complaining to the check-in girl. After a series of whispered excuses, hesitations and more excuses, the girl picked up her MOBILE PHONE and called someone with whom she had a brief 4-5 minutes conversation. Now, I don't speak Tagalog in more than just a couple dozen words maybe and I don't pretend to understand 100% however I have lived here long enough to understand the main conversation line and the other part of the details from the people's gestures and body language...even in a SEEMINGLY ONE SIDED sort of conversation I was eavesdropping on now.
Paraphrased a bit for theatrical effect, conversation sounded to me like this:
"Kuya, can you call...the luggage was loaded already but ... is not here. (missing spaces are where I forgot the names or couldn't understand some words and so forth)
Then guy says something about a number so she writes down a number goes out for a while comes back and makes more excuses about the pilot not being ready yet, those foreigners get even more irritated and start being really obnoxious so the girl picks up the phone and calls again (this time apparently someone else).
"Hello, good morning po ... we are ready to go since ... when are you going to be here there are people saying this and that etc etc"
The guy says something which from her body language and response after, made me believe that was probably something like "I WOKE UP ALREADY. I WILL GET THERE IN 45 MINUTES." (Of course, I could be probably wrong but then again the f***ing PILOT didn't show up for work in time and was not there after already a couple of hours or more. How off could I have been actually, regardless of the reason?)
So she says "Ok po I will tell ... " Click!
Well, she did tell someone alright...After that a new announcement was made that the plane had some unknown problem and it's gonna take a while and they rescheduled the flight for f***ing 11 past. Since I was there from 5.30 and it was just another few hours away I said "F*** it! I will stay here!...Wrong decision! I should have f***ing left and forget all about it, buy another ticket with another airline and wish these guys a bomber on the plane when they are happiest (I AM NOT SUGGESTING, INFERRING OR THREATENING IT IS JUST FOR THE STORYTELLING EFFECT...FOR THOSE GUYS MONITORING BLOGS FOR SHIT LIKE THAT, OK GUYS? THANK YOU!) because they rescheduled the whole thing for 3pm with some flight from Manila which was passing by or some similar bullshit. And OK, at 3pm finally I departed for Boracay. On the way back similar delays and above everything else, a different plane than the one I was supposed to take back, at that time ending up in a flying a Dornier which was close to flapping its wings all the way back...Almost like this SErtain AIRline was giving everyone there a set of wings and a kick in the ass as a return flight...a truly life enriching experience, that was!
Also for those who don't know, Dornier is an old-ass plane produced in the '20s and/or '30s, if my memory serves me right...so it wasn't exactly a 747, f*** not even a regular charter!
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And so, my stream of consciousness returned me to the present day thinking what the f*** was I thinking when I bought my tickets with these duchebags and just out of curiosity I asked my friends how they knew exactly about the delay and so forth.
And THIS was a surprise indeed, BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN CALLED BY SOMEONE AT THE AIRLINE TO ANNOUNCE THEM OF THE DELAY AND FLIGHT TO MANILA!
EVEN MORE, ABOUT AN INITIAL CHANGE OF DEPARTURE AIRPORTS FROM CATICLAN TO ANOTHER ONE CLOSE BY, CHANGE LATER ON CANCELED, OF WHICH THEY HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED AGAIN LATER ON...Go figure that out!
I mean, this must be possibly their exact corporate view of their suckers / customers / people who pay tickets to fly with their shitty-ass pelican wings Icarus-like airline.
I, of course, still wonder why I didn't get a call, or an email to say the least, or a f***ing traveler pigeon for f***'s sake...
So I asked if they had privileged rights, first class tickets in an economy class flight only or any similar shit like that...and they said they did not.
As a matter of fact, THEY HAD THE EXACT SAME TYPE OF FLIGHT TICKETS AS I HAD.
Besides that, they themselves asked already why the delays, why the change of airports and so forth and nobody could give them a logical explanation, which understandably irritated them also, but what else could have been done there?
We couldn't possibly swim back to North Luzon together now, could we?
Furthermore, they told me they had left an INTERNATIONAL CELL NUMBER as a contact number and they received the SErtain's AIRline calls on their LOCAL CELL NUMBER...and that's some shit that is already too creepy to even think about going into right now...MAYBE IN A DIFFERENT ENTRY! :P
The grand finale to the whole story was that after the renewed standard set of excuses and the rest of their corporate sales pitch bullshit we got from the flight attendant we have been offered small (VERY SMALL) bottles of water as a compensation for our inconvenience and dehydration...PROBABLY TO SHOW THAT THE COMPANY REALLY CARES ABOUT OUR HEALTH!
The only thing that bothered me was that the water was at room temperature (and there were 35 degrees Celsius outside...OK, so maybe the water was only 25 but does that really make a f***ing huge difference?)
I HAD TO ASK IF THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY COLD WATER AFTER ALL THE TROUBLE AND THE ANSWER WAS AS SHORT AS THEIR LINE OF CUSTOMERS WILL BE FROM NOW ON, I HOPE. NO, WE DON'T HAVE ANY!
From MANILA a van took part of us back to CLARK after spending over 2 hours just roaming freely the streets of MANILA trying to get out from the crazy traffic that is always about and finally reached CLARK at approximately 10pm, after at least 4 hours delay with AN OTHERWISE STANDARD 1 HOUR FLIGHT TICKET BOOKED BACK TO CLARK...AND THIS IS THE SECOND TIME IT HAS HAPPENED JUST TO ME PERSONALLY!
WHY IS THIS SHIT TAKING PLACE APPARENTLY WITH MOST IF NOT ALL THE FLIGHTS OF THIS PARTICULAR AIRLINE?...THE ANSWER LIES IN FINANCING.
CLARK AIRPORT IS GEOGRAPHICALLY SITUATED NORTH OF MANILA AIRPORT WHILE CATICLAN AIRPORT IS FARTHER SOUTH THAN BOTH. THIS MEANS THAT WHEN FLYING BACK FROM BORACAY, THIS MANILA BASED AIRLINE WILL HAVE TO FLY AAAAALL THE WAY NORTH TO CLARK FIRST THEN SOUTH BACK TO MANILA.
THIS ALSO MEANS THAT THEY WILL SPEND MORE MONEY ON JET FUEL FLYING NORTH TO CLARK, THEN BACK SOUTH TO MANILA AND EVEN POSSIBLY CHARTERING THE AIRCRAFT (RENTING THEM INSTEAD OF OWNING THEM, THUS PAYING EVEN MORE MONEY FOR THE AIR TIME), WHILE PUTTING PEOPLE IN SOME SHITTY VANS AND SENDING THEM ON THEIR WAY WITH A BOTTLE OF ROOM TEMPERATURE WATER IN THEIR HANDS AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE, WILL MAKE COMPANY SAVINGS AND PROFITS INCREASE OVER TIME.
BUT WE PAY FOR THESE "EXTRA EXPENSES" WHEN BUYING THE TICKETS, ONE MIGHT SAY.
SO WHAT IF WE PAY THE FULL PRICE FOR THE DISTANCES WE COVER IN FLYING?
SO WHAT IF PEOPLE PAY MONEY TO FLY TO SPECIFIC DESTINATIONS AT SPECIFIC TIMES?
SO WHAT IF SOME OF THE CUSTOMERS MIGHT MISS THEIR FLIGHTS DUE TO LACK OF TIMELY DISCLOSURE OF CHANGES BY THE COMPANY?
THIS ONLY OPENS NEW PROFIT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THIS SErtain AIRline WHICH APPARENTLY HAS MADE AWAY WITH THIS MARKETING STRATEGY FOR AT LEAST 3 YEARS, AGAIN JUST BASED ON MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
And I'm thinking I had such a beautiful holiday in Boracay, away from this bullshit world of corporate abuse and cattle-like treatment...
Yes, but like every dream it ends as soon as you wake up!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
