A promise delivered

After two succeeding unpleasant experiences with flight attendants of Cebu Pacific, I had always said to myself that I will never take a flight on board Cebu Pacific that I had to spend personally money on. Yet, for the number of years that I was a business, then feature, and finally editor-in-chief of Zamboanga Today, I had never closed pages on Cebu Pacific—that is, all their press releases have still been well-received.

Sometime last year, the company's PR agency sent me an e-mail with an attached press release on Cebu's Pacific efforts to improve its transport facilities, upgrading a number of things. This also came at a time when I just had a recent trip to Cebu, that gave me no choice to take the flight as it was a trip funded by a non-government organization. My immediate reaction and action was to mail the sender (a Ms. Michelle de Guzman) and extend my hopes that the company would also work on improving the services of the "front liners" who are the flight attendants. I actually forgot all about it, until, a few days later, I was surprised to receive a response that bore an apology and an assurance that the company would work towards a more efficiently delivered service from the flight attendants.

I had the e-mail published, as I personally appreciated the response from Cebu Pacific's executives. It also demonstrated how a large company would be humble enough to address customer's "near-to-screaming" voices.

I had never held back in telling people (the rest of my family would never fly via Cebu Pacific unless there was no other choice) of my experiences with Cebu Pacific flight attendants whom I found to be rude and ungracious with hypocritical smiles at times plastered on their faces. Some had said that it was the sacrifice passengers had to get in exchange of low rates. In response, I always say many people would still be willing to pay extra hundreds of pesos for warm and friendly attention from airline company employees. I would. And many other companies, be they airline or not, would still be delivering low cost offers for whatever product or service without having to exchange the economic edge for quality in service delivery.

At one time, I had even snapped at one of the stewardesses and said, how ironic it was for the company to publish a magazine named 'Smile' when on board alone, one doesn't find a sincere smile from an employee who is supposed to be the model of graciousness.

The recent trip to Davao City on board a Cebu PacificAir flight was a relatively novel experience for me with charming flight attendants, warmly greeting boarding passengers and politely guiding those who were demonstrating inquiring looks. I particularly noted one pretty attendant assisting an elderly lady who flashed her back a grateful smile before fastening her seat belt. From the entire team, there was no trace of the snobbish and haughty air of impatient flight attendants—the only staff of Cebu Pacific that I had very little respect for, in many years.

I'd like to think that when the company sent me an email (sadly it was in an old e-mail that I had already abandoned) that carried it with it not only an apology for the attitude of the erring flight attendants, but also the assurance that the company will indeed work on improved public relations from their staff, it also attached to it the silent promise that one day their flight attendants themselves would prove me wrong and that there are, somehow, in some of their planes, warm exceptions to the stigma I mentally stuck on them.

On my flight from Davao to Zamboanga on August 10, Cebu Pacific delivered to me that promise. (Frencie L. Carreon)