PAL cracks down on 25 pilots ready to jump ship

PHILIPPINE Airlines on Sunday rejected the resignation of 25 pilots who quit without notice, telling them to return to work or face charges after their departure forced the airline to cancel flights and rebook passengers over the weekend.

Airline pilots and mechanics were required by labor regulations to give six months’ notice before quitting, the airline said. The pilots were also obliged to stay with the airline for two years to cover the cost of their aviation school training, which ran into millions of pesos.

“The indiscriminate resignations are in violation of contracts and government regulations,” said spokesman Jonathan Gesmundo, who apologized for the flight cancellations and blamed the poaching by Asian and Middle Eastern airlines for the exodus.

The carrier, controlled by billionaire Lucio Tan, canceled at least 19 weekend flights after 13 captains and 12 first officers crewing Airbus A-319 and A-320 aircraft resigned without giving the company enough time to train replacements, the company said in a statement Sunday.

Pilots were being pirated by overseas firms, including Middle Eastern airlines that were offering salaries three times more than PAL was paying, or as much as $15,000 a month, the company said.

Airport sources said some of the pilots who had quit were also seeking employment in Korea and Vietnam.

“PAL doesn’t want to get in the way of its pilots’ dream of landing better-paying jobs abroad, but they have contractual obligations with the company and a moral responsibility to thousands of passengers,” the airline said.

President Benigno Aquino III stepped into the row Sunday, calling a meeting of Transport, Labor and Justice Department officials and the airline’s executives on Monday.

“There has been disruption to our tourism efforts,” Aquino said in a briefing Sunday, adding the pilots might face charges.

No passengers had been stranded due to the cancellations, said Consuelo Bungag, a spokesman for the Manila International Airport Authority.

PAL notified passengers ahead of time, re-booked them on alternative flights and had shifted to larger planes to accommodate more people, she said.

Eight provincial flights to Cagayan, Bacolod, Iloilo and Cebu were canceled Sunday.

On Saturday, the pilot shortage led to the cancellation of at least 11 flights, including three bound Hong Kong. The airline said it was adjusting its schedule and would probably bring in bigger aircraft to accommodate affected passengers.

PAL said the pilots’ resignations had nothing to do with the management’s ongoing labor dispute with the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association, which involved staff whose functions included ground handling.

The debt-burdened carrier has said it will lay off some of its workforce due to losses for the third straight year. As early as 2006, PAL had warned the government that its corps of experienced commercial pilots was being decimated by unchecked poaching by foreign airlines.

“In the last three years alone, Philippine Airlines has lost 74 of its well-trained senior pilots—nearly 20 percent of its pilot roster—to poachers,” the airline said in March 2006.

It said it took, on average, 10-and-a-half years to graduate, train, qualify and nurture a pilot to the rank of captain of a B747-400 in a major airline. The total investment required for this decade-long process came up to P12.1 million.

“Deep-pocketed foreign carriers, seeking to save on cost, time and effort, bypass the long pilot-training and -maturing process by luring away experienced first officers and captains from the country’s airlines,” the airline said.

“They do this mostly through illegal means. A favored tactic is to invite the pilots to visit the airline’s home base as tourists and then provide them employment visas upon arrival. Another involves the airline’s recruitment staff coming to Manila and lodging themselves in hotels and even embassies.

“They then surreptitiously interview and recruit pilots, signing them into employment contracts without the [Philippine Overseas Employment Administration’s] approval, in violation of Philippine labor law.” With Bloomberg, AP