Ateneo de Davao president to Cebu Pacific: “You do not deserve customers”

Ateneo de Davao University (ADDU) president Fr. Joel E. Tabora, S.J., wrote to the management of Cebu Pacific. The letter was with regards to the “irregular landing of Flight 5J971” at the Davao International Airport and the failure of the airline “to give humane assistance to the passengers” during the time of emergency

According to a post on the university’s official Twitter account (@ADDU_official) on the afternoon of June 3: “The University had students, faculty and administrators in Flight 5J971. We have first hand information of what happened.”

Fr. Joel’s letter reads:

June 3, 2013

To the Management of Cebu Pacific:

The Ateneo de Davao University (ADDU) has been a loyal customer of Cebu-Pacific  for many, many years. Last night you proved you do not deserve our patronage.

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. After the irregular landing of Flight 5J971, the engine caught visible fire before the plane came to a stop off 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. Twenty-seven minutes however without appropriate communications 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 on and a half hours!

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.

When you put such people in the care of people, you endanger lives. Under these circumstances, we will generally recommend a boycott of Cebu Pacific. You do not deserve customers.

Sincerely in Our Lord,

FR. JOEL E. TABORA, S.J.
President

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photo: twitter.com/joeltaborasj