Philippine Domestic Airline Tickets

[JJReyes]

I purchased a round trip ticket Honolulu-Manila-Honolulu on Philippine Airlines for a two-weeks business trip. My domestic travel includes going to Cagayan de Oro and Cebu for meetings. If I try booking a Manila-Cagayan-Cebu-Manila domestic ticket, the price is more than P20,000. If I try Manila-Cagayan-Manila AND Manila-Cebu-Manila tickets, it is less than P12,000.

 

Am I doing something wrong or is it an idiotic computer program? The results are about the same with Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific.

 

By the way, any recommendations for a good hotel in Cagayan de Oro?

[Bruce]

WELCOME to the PAL twilight zone! I did a multi city search 2 years ago LA-Manila-Tacloban-Cebu-Manila-LA and came up with $4800 USD PLUS TAX (added on back then) but if i did the same search for each leg (RT la-man-la) , it was about $1,300 USD. I think I wrote a post about it back then.

 

Same actual flights booked together or separatly! I wrote in emails and asked why and NO ONE would accept responsibility! Each customer service person in the web department and the booking department blamed each other and neither wanted to kick this information upstairs to someone with at least 1/4 of a brain for a review. 

 

I also discovered that PAL had a default price of $1632 preset into the LA-Manila-LA which was almost double the actual price. It semed that PAL used that $1632 as a place holder while they figured out what to do in pricing out past 60 days.  

 

I wrote the then president Jamie Bautista about this multi city computer issue and got no reply. My point was that with Korean Air and the others from Japan and Cathay et al all looking for the ass to sit in the seat to fill up the flights.... If the PAL computer multi city issue spit out a such a high price, how many potential fliers would NOT take the time to do an individual search and instead, switch to another air line's search engine, never to come back to PAL.  

 

But.... well...... sorry sir out of stock! Sorry sir the manager is IN TRAVEL! Sorry sir we do not stock that! .... PAL seems to hire from the same breeding stock that supplies the vast part of the Philippines with 300p a day workers.

 

Here in America, there is a school of jokers called ITT Tech (credits may not be transferable) that advertize for the bottom level of soceity that can qualify for a government student loan to go to their computer skool. Their graduates are on par with McDonald's employees who are working on a career saying... 'Would you like fries with that?"

 

I am not sure, but I strongly suspect that ITT Tech may have a branch in the Philippines! :hystery:  Or perhaps, in a cost cutting measure, PAL uses computer skool interns to program their computers.....

 

In any event.... JJ, to try to point this out to them is a waste of time. :thumbsup:  

Edited February 10, 2013 by Bruce

[JJReyes]

I tried purchasing the Philippine Airlines default price from Honolulu, which is $1,070 using PAL's website. They don't accept American Express and PAL's website wouldn't accept my Mastercard. No reason given. Just the message, "Try another credit card." Then all the data I imputed disappears. So I went to CheapOTickets to purchase the same seat for $1,070 with my American Express. PAL now has to pay them a commission . Go figure.

 

The default price for Hawaiian Airlines and United Airlines were higher. I couldn't wait for the possibility of lower prices within 60 days of your flight date. Sometimes it goes up because of Philippine summer vacation. With the new prosperity, lots of families travel overseas. My business appointments require knowing the arrival and departure dates in advance.

 

One reason for the trip is to attend the 3rd Annual Philippine Retirement & Healthcare Summit sponsored by the Department of Tourism, Philippine Retirement Authority, and the Philippine Retirement & Healthcare Coalition (American, European, Japanese and Korean Chambers of Commerce and the private sector). The 2nd Summit was scheduled last year in April. After purchasing an airline ticket and paying in advance for my hotel, they rescheduled the conference to June! I also pre-paid my conference fee, but they agreed to a refund. Try that stunt in the USA and the organizer face lawsuits.

 

I will try booking one section at a time with each as a separate purchase. The other option is to fly back to Manila from Cagayan and then catch the next flight to Cebu. Anyway, I will be in the Philippines from April 13th to 27th.

Edited February 10, 2013 by JJReyes

[i am bob]

Actually, JJ, CheapOTickets will be paying the commission out of what they make off of the airline.  Hey, if it works for them, why not?

[GregZ]

I didn't see your dates before I ran a test so using 5 March, Cebu Pacific was under 9000 php to book separate 1 way tickets, Manila-CDO-Cebu-Manila.  I did NOT use the promo fare (couple thousand less total).

 

I re-checked with 17 April and under 8k was the result. 

 

Just don't miss a flight with Cebu Pacific, always arrive EARLY because they cut-off check-in 45 minutes before flight time even if flight is delayed.

 

Kingston Lodge Hotel is where the ex-pats there meet.  GOOD??? I don't know, but it looked good on internet.

Edited February 11, 2013 by GregZ

[Bruce]

I didn't see your dates before I ran a test so using 5 March, Cebu Pacific was under 9000 php to book separate 1 way tickets, Manila-CDO-Cebu-Manila.  I did NOT use the promo fare (couple thousand less total).

 

I re-checked with 17 April and under 8k was the result. 

 

Just don't miss a flight with Cebu Pacific, always arrive EARLY because they cut-off check-in 45 minutes before flight time even if flight is delayed.

 

Kingston Lodge Hotel is where the ex-pats there meet.  GOOD??? I don't know, but it looked good on internet.

 

Back in 2009 I booked 4 flights from Cebu to Tacloban on Cebu Pacific. 2 of them went bad. One whilst we were in sight of the Tacloban air port! turned around and went back to Cebu. So I try NOT to use them if I can get on a PAL flight.

[Call me bubba]

. PAL seems to hire from the same breeding stock that supplies the vast part of the Philippines with 300p a day workers

 

:th_thbestpost:       i agree ..

 

I wrote in emails and asked why and NO ONE would accept responsibility! Each customer service person in the web department and the booking department blamed each other and neither wanted to kick this information upstairs to someone with at least 1/4 of a brain for a review.

 

 

it seems that many firms that have EMAIL just doesnt want to answer or dont care.

 would anyone know why that is?

 appears that EMAIL is a much cheaper way to answer/resolve some issues or problems,

 is it that the RP or the business culture is LAZY? dont care? or just inapt? (incompetent)

or scared shR it less to make a decision as they may lose their job?

[GregZ]

Back in 2009 I booked 4 flights from Cebu to Tacloban on Cebu Pacific. 2 of them went bad. One whilst we were in sight of the Tacloban air port! turned around and went back to Cebu. So I try NOT to use them if I can get on a PAL flight.

 

We used them 8 times in 2012 and had no problems... VERY satisfied with what they do, except making me be early.  :bash:   They must have new 20-26 year olds running the place.  :hystery:

[MikeB]

There's an oped piece in today's paper saying that Cebu Pacific has gotten their act together in the last year. I've flown several times with them and had 1 cancelled flight, the rest were ok. Maybe they deserve a 2nd chance.

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/opinion/2013/02/11/atienza-high-and-low-267572

[Thomas]

Not only the flight companies mensioned above have big errors in their websites. Back close after RP had changed the rules for the fees at the airports for the flight companies, it was a a big difference between these SAME route:
/Stockholm - Manila - Stockholm (lowest price in that search back then landed in HongKong.)
/Because I thought staying a day in HongKong when it land there anyway, I just HAPPENED to check Stockholm-HongKong-Stockholm plus HongKong-Manila-Hongkong separate.

With suiting switches in both cases. The separated one told 300 USD LESS!

I am not sure, but I strongly suspect that ITT Tech may have a branch in the Philippines!   Or perhaps, in a cost cutting measure, PAL uses computer skool interns to program their computers.....

Such errors AREN'T made by the programmers, they are made by the DEVELOPERS who make the STRUCTURE.

 

(The only thing my father know about computer software developing/programing is that computers "think" true/false for everything, but when the Swedish government got a complicated database developed, he had to tell the developer experts several times "You can't do like that, because it conflict with what you did in the X part."

E g when an acquaintance of mine worked developing and programming a complex database system in his own company, he found out after 2 years work the using became much to slow. DURING he told me about that, I looked at how he had split and structured his databases, I saw why it became very slow, although I have just a half semester of such studies.)

 

PROGRAMMING need skill for DETAILS, and need of study programming language

while DEVELOPING need skill for STRUCTURE. Such skill you have or you haven't, education can just teach how to communicate with programmers in their "language". (And it can teach the NOT structure skilled students solutions they can COPY  :)   but they CAN'T learn to develop good new structures by themselves...)

 

The hard part in adjusting PROGRAMMING errors is to find where they are in a lot of programming code,

while an error in the structure can in worst case need the work to be started from the beginning...

(Some less hard to make structuring since object orrianted developing started. IF the main structure is made good enough, then (most of) the rest can be developed as separate modules just communicating e g trough temporary memory or databases, so the separate moduls can't make any mess dor other moduls. IF the structure is made good enough, so the relevant data is LAST put in the communication system before it's needed by the "outside".)