The Department of Transportation and Communications has laid down its contingency measures to avert possible service disruption of Philippine Airlines if the airline's ground and cabin crew strike, a government press release said.
Dante Velasco, DOTC Undersecretary for Public Information, said the Civil Aeronautics Board has informed them that Southeast Asian Airlines and Spirit of Manila Airlines have signified interest to serve the routes that PAL may stop serving because of the strike.
SOMA only operates between Clark in Pampanga to Taipei in Taiwan now.
Velasco said SEAIR was also willing "but its capability is contingent on the actual delivery of their leased aircraft."
SEAIR is leasing two Airbus A320 to Tiger Airways.
The DOTC official, however, said that the labor dispute between PAL management and the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines will be resolved.
"We just want to be ready," Velasco said in the press release.
The labor dispute between the PAL management and Fasap earlier bogged down after the union rejected the airline’s offer of P80 million economic package under their collective bargaining agreement covering 2005 to 2010.
The standoff made Fasap decide to file a notice of strike this week.
Velasco also said that the CAB plans to implement a "partial deregulation" of the airline industry if PAL's service halted.
He said a "partial deregulation" means that there is no limit on the number of flights and routes that can be flown by any domestic airline and fares are also less regulated.
Velasco also said that the CAB will communicate with the foreign airlines concerned to assess their willingness and capability to expand their services to cover the international routes that PAL cannot operate.
Other contingency measures include identifying the foreign carriers which would serve the routes serviced by PAL, the code share partners of PAL and the interline partners of PAL.
Earlier, PAL said it will deploy its administrative and other staff if its ground and cabin crew strike and passengers may also be transferred to PAL’s 134 partner airlines in case of flight disruptions.
PAL has a total of 134 interline partners – 12 airlines in Southeast Asia; 11 in the USA and Canada; 25 in Europe; 12 in the Middle East
It has three partner airlines in Japan; and 10 airlines in China.
PAL also has a pending labor problem with PAL Employees Association because of the airline’s plan to spin off its three non-core businesses.
The affected units are in-flight catering services, airport services (including ground handling, cargo terminal/cargo handling, and ramp handling) and call-center reservations that employ 3,000.
PAL said that it was forced to implement the restructuring plan because of the global recession, high fuel prices, unabated liberalization of the commercial aviation industry and recent blacklisting of Philippine carriers by the European Union.*
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