My unbelievably bad experience with Philippine Airlines in a recent trip to the U.S. began with waiting for our flight to depart. Of course the flight was more than one hour late, after all P.A.L. stands for ”Plane Always Late,” in addition to Philippine Airlines. The PAL employee on the microphone explained that their plane from Hong Kong that we were using for our flight to Los Angeles was late, so we were going to be late. The way the announcer explained our situation it was as if the fact that PAL’s flight from Hong Kong was not the Manila crew’s problem, so the fact we would be over an hour late was not their responsibility. I can understand the delays caused by weather, but PAL’s delays are more frequently related to their incompetence and not winds or rain.
Things quickly got worse as the waiting area for passengers soon became “standing room only.” There were obviously only about half of the seats required to accommodate all of the passengers on our flight. PAL made certain that about half of their passengers had to sit on the floor because they cordoned off the waiting area of our flight. How much airline services expertise is required to determine you need to have one seat for each passenger – particularly when your planes are always late? I can’t imagine how any airline cannot resolve this very, very basic problem.
The next big PAL problem was the food served. Not only was it not flavorful – it was poisonous! About six to eight hours after the offending meal was served, passengers began forming long lines to visit the lavatories. I also noticed that once a passenger finally gained access to a lavatory, they stayed a very long time. Later when I began sick and had to vomit, I realized why passengers stayed in the lavatories such a long time. To make matters worse, the flight attendants constantly harangued passengers about staying in their seats when they desperately needed a little privacy to expel their poisonous dinners.
Because of the schedule of our connecting return flight from Phoenix to LAX, we were quite early to check-in for our return flight to Manila – again on PAL. We were shocked to find a line containing about a hundred passengers waiting to check-in for our flight nearly two-and-a-half hours before the scheduled departure time. After spending an hour in this line that never seemed to move, we soon realized why everyone was there so early. Once we made it to check-in counter (about 90 minutes later) we began to understand we the line was moving so slowly. We were asked many questions about why we were in L.A., were we stayed, and who could be contacted in case of emergency. I guess the contact information is important if you regularly poison your passengers. This way PAL can arrange for your friends and family to visit you in the hospital. It took us almost ten minutes to check-in once we reached the check-in counter and we only had two pieces of check-in luggage! One big problem was my husband’s Philippine visa. He had a visa that was valid for this trip but it took quite a long time to convince the PAL employees of that fact. Just think about this. If it takes you ten minutes to check-in each passenger, then you will need over 60 hours to check-in a flight with over 400 passengers. No wonder that line was so long two-and-a-hours before departure!
Lastly, let me tell you about PAL’s non-stop flight from LAX to Manila – that stops in Guam. Yes that’s right, a non-stop flight that lands and then stops for ninety minutes while the plan is cleaned, restocked, and fueled. PAL seems to think that if passengers are not allowed to leave the plane, the stop is really not a stop. For me, if the plan stops moving (hopefully at an airport) then it is a stop. But PAL does not seem to agree with this definition. Come to think of it, after this experience I think there are many issues associated with running an airline about which PAL and I do not agree.