Friday, August 1, 2008

a flyer about flying

This flyer was inserted in today's newspaper circulated in Dumaguete:


This is a kind of milestone in Dumaguete aviation history because once upon a time, before Air Philippines and Cebu Pacific came to be, Philippine Airlines totally pulled out all their flights to and from Dumaguete. For several months or maybe a couple of years, I'm not very sure now how long it was, the airport runway became a veritable grazing ground for cattle as well as the perfect practice place for beginning motorists. This was like a blow to us, a little island in our archipelagic geography, because before this absolute PAL pull-out, we had flights to Manila and to Cebu. Stunned and grumbling, commuters from Dumaguete had to go to Cebu or Bacolod by land or by sea to be able to get flights to Manila. Or take the slow boat from Dumaguete direct to Manila, which would mean spending more than 24 hours at sea.

Flash forward several years later, (don't expect exact numbers from me, I'm totally duh with them) and we had four flights a day that left and arrived within minutes of each other! I'm not going to argue with the flight schedulers, I know they know what they are doing. There's a whole Country to arrange flight schedules for, afterall.

So now we're going to have PAL flying MNL/DGT/MNL twice a day. This is in addition to the present three/four round trip flights that we have. Cebu Pacific flies twice a day, everyday. Air Philippines flies twice a day on some days and once a day on other days. Wow, that's great for the flyers. Especially with the SU Founder's Day celebration coming up fast, these flights are most welcome.

I remember (here goes) that during SU's centennial (2001), one or two planes were chartered to fly reunioning alumni all the way from America. Or maybe it was just a whole plane booked by Sillimanians, I can't be absolutely sure of my data, forgive me, I'm not a journalist, and these stories are products of my, you know... fading memory. But can you imagine that? Flying all the way from America to Manila (and transfering to a smaller plane for the domestic leg) and you are all schoolmates in the plane?! What a noisy flight it must have been!

1 comment:

Vk-mahalkaayo said...

wow mayo sa?
b4, sigi mi sa PAL, kay pag-abot sa manila, wait sila kung madelayed ang flight from Germany.
Aside from this, pagreconfined sa ticket or any, rebooked, dali ra kay naa ra sa dgte ang office nila, kay kung sa uban plane, extra payment sa services pa.

....dli na mag-overnight sa manila, as if hassle gyd kaayo,.
kay mo gawas sa airport, rest in hotel tapos next day, tua na pod goyod sa mga luggage,....kapoy n budlay gyd kaayo.

tapos try via cebu, mas kapoy n hassle gyd ug samot, labi na wla nay flight from cebu-dumaguete.

naka parat lang wala nay PAL diri frankfurt-manila.....why, ambot kaha.

really, nindot gyd kaayo sakyan ang PAL....proud of it kay magkabisaya n tagalog man...mostly pinoy sakay.....proud kay PAL....atoa ni!!!!!

thanks for sharing........pero wla na lagi PAL....Frankfurt-Manila, hope mabalik diri.