Cebu Pacific faces customer anger over Sunday's emergency landing

(Updated 11:21 p.m.) Air carrier Cebu Pacific now faces the anger of at least one unhappy customer over the way it said the company dealt with the emergency landing of one of its planes in Davao City on Sunday. That unhappy customer happened to be the Ateneo de Davao University, whose president Fr. Joel Tabora ordered that the school no longer patronize the airline as a sign of protest. But Tabora made it clear that the outrage was not so much over any mechanical failure as over the crew's insensitivity toward the passengers of the flight. "I am ordering that ADDU no longer purchase tickets from Cebu Pacific in protest against the insensitivity and ineptness of the manner in which the Cebu Pacific passengers were ignored and neglected by your personnel last night in an hour of emergency," Tabora said in a strongly worded letter to Cebu Pacific's management. "I am incensed not because there was a mechanical failure last night, but because of Cebu Pacific's manifest human failure. Where was your concern for the passengers? Your personnel lack training for an emergency situation. They froze. They did not know what to do. They must be able to put the welfare of the passengers before their own. And they must be trained to do so," he added. Under such circumstances, he said, "we will generally recommend a boycott of Cebu Pacific. You do not deserve customers." Tabora added that while ADDU had been a loyal customer of Cebu Pacific for many years, on Sunday night the airline proved "you do not deserve our patronage." On Sunday night, a Cebu Pacific 5J-971 aircraft skidded off the runway as it landed at the  Francisco Bangoy International Airport in Davao City. On its Twitter account, the company said the plane made an emergency landing after veering to the right during a heavy downpour. But Tabora noted that after the plane's irregular landing, the engine visibly caught fire before the plane came to a stop off the runway. "The Cebu Pacific personnel failed to give humane assistance to the passengers. No instructions were given; no calming words spoken. Instead a pilot of another airline undertook to calm the passengers. It was only after 27 minutes in a smoked cabin that the passengers were allowed to leave the plane by coming down emergency slides," he said. During those 27 minutes, he said, the passengers got no appropriate communication, which he said is entirely too long. "What if the engine had exploded? What if someone had choked due to the smoke? What if there was an emergency medical situation on the plane in those 27 minutes? I am also told that once the passengers were finally in the airport, no one came to talk to them until after one and a half hours!" he said. For its part, ADDU said on its Twitter account that it had students, faculty and administrators aboard Flight 5J-971. "We have first hand information of what happened," it said. Meanwhile, asked for comment, Cebu Pacific spokesperson Candace Iyog said, "There are some factual errors in his [Tabora's] letter and we would like to explain matters to him directly." — DVM/BM, GMA News