The Thanksgiving Party, thrown by the Gokongwei Travel Group last 17 November, was a fun, riotous affair, with bloggers, vloggers and representatives of traditional mainstream media outfits from all over the country gathering at NUSTAR's Axis Entertainment and Sports Bar in Cebu for good food, drinks and much dancing to live music by Axis' superbly talented house band, REVEL.

There was much for the Group, particularly Cebu Pacific (CEB, Cebu Air), to revel and be grateful for since, by all indications, the airline seems to have hurdled the humps and bumps it encountered in the past year.

Looking back, Candice Iyog, CEB Air's chief marketing and customer experience officer said, "In the first quarter, we had our big plans for the year supported by all of the plans we've set in place, with 19 aircraft deliveries scheduled. We were confident that we were going to recover and recover strong early in the year."

Milestones

Milestones in April included CEB Air's reopening of the airline's Clark International Airport hub, with the resumption of flights to and from Bacolod, Boracay, Davao and Bangkok resumed; these flights have been operating in CRK for over five years but were scaled down during the Covid-19 pandemic. Flights from Clark also connect to Cebu, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, Puerto Princesa, Hong Kong, General Santos, Singapore, Macau, Taipei, Incheon and Narita.

"In the second quarter, we started the launches. We started the Clark hub and the Cebu hub. We had the Manila-Laoag launch, we started strong. And then came the issues with the Pratt & Whitney engines which were much publicized and we learned a lot from that," said Iyog.

During a Senate Committee on tourism hearing in mid-July which looked into passenger complaints regarding flights disruptions, such as overbooking and cancelled flights, CEB AIR execs put the blame on, among others, freak incidents, such as bird strikes, sudden severe weather disturbances and global logistics slowdown.

Unprecedented Challenges

Cebu Pacific president and chief commercial officer Alexander Lao explained during one particular hearing that there have been unprecedented challenges, noting that red lightening alerts have become more prevalent and in longer duration. For instance, he said, between April to June alone, CEB Air logged a total of 78 red lightening alerts which led to the disruption of some 535 flights.

Lao also said delays in maintenance service for its planes adversely affected operations, even as Airbus had failed to deliver on time new aircraft which have been ordered. These delays in delivery caused changes in flight schedules, flight cancellations and equipment changes from larger to smaller aircraft resulting to passenger disruption and perceptions of overbooking.

Said Iyog, "It was a big challenge. It was one of the most difficult challenges we had to grapple with but in hindsight, everything is relative. We compared it to the pandemic and we're still better off than when we were in the pandemic."

And, she continued, "We took it as an opportunity to continue to improve; we worked closely with NAIA, (because) communication was critical, we worked together to make improvements in communicating with passengers. We activated our customer journey management team specifically tasked to work closely on the ground if there were disruptions; we improved communications, whether through notifications on the ground, at the gate or inflight."

No more expiration date

Also in August, CEB Air did away with the expiration date of its travel fund and extended travel voucher validity from six to 18 months. The vouchers are given to passengers' experience flight disruptions — two-way travel vouchers for flights cancelled within 72 hours and one-way travel vouchers for flights delayed from four to six hours.

Lao has also emphasized that the long-standing policy of free rebooking of flights within 30 days has always been observed. "No truth at all to what has been said that the airline is earning extra money from canceled flights; rebooking of flights are free," he stressed.

The results of intense efforts to improve customer policies, particularly heightened customer care have started to see positive results in the last quarter. "Operations are stable. We're launching flights from Manila to Da Nang, Vietnam — the only airline to do so. We're doing flights to Shenzhen. We continue to take delivery of aircraft — 14 were already delivered and five more are coming. We have seen significant improvement in terms of our NPS (net promoter score, measure used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, enthusiasm) and OTP (on time performance) which, for November, was 85 percent, and our NPS at positive 37 — the highest we've seen in the year," enthused Iyog.

The CEB Air executive showed a slide that illustrated the airline's robust recovery from the pandemic with system-wide network capacity in Q4 at 103 percent. "We're now flying to 60 domestic and international destinations, and 102 local and international routes by yearend with new routes and 2,700 flights weekly by the end of this year," she said. 

Soar to new heights

For his part, JG Summit Holdings, Inc. president and chief executive officer Lance Gokongwei, speaking online to members of media and Gokongwei Group executives and employees, made a toast along with everyone gathered at the dinner venue to "a future filled with continued success. As we continue to soar to new heights, we look forward to many more collaborations and achievements together."

The party at NUSTAR over, members of Manila media were brought to the stunning Dusit Thani Hotel at the northwestern tip of Punta Engaño Peninsula in Mactan.

One steps into the lobby and immediately the holiday mood sets in, with the unmistakable whiff of cinnamon and gingerbread coming from the gingerbread-clad Deli and the glittering seven-meter Christmas Tree soaring up the hotel lobby's 12-meter-high ceiling.

After a night of revelry, the Dusit Thani Mactan — built on a sprawling three-hectare luxuriant piece of property and set far from the harried pace and din of urban Cebu — was the perfect place to come home to — luxuriating, as we did in our deluxe quarters, and taking a dip in the hotel's amazing 100-meter infinity pool looking out to Magellan Bay. Mind-blowing, indeed.