chisquared

Great article by Oliver Segovia here.

BoarderX

Truth. Not a Dec 24-25 surge problem. I took seven Cebu Pacific flights over the past 11 days. 6/7 delayed by more than two hours. Madhouse at MNL every single time. No information or even basic information. A sham company.

joban

I took several Cebu Pacific flights about 5 years ago. I didn't have a problem with any of the flights. It is a shame at what has happened more recently.

enelym1978

Took them only 4 times on the SIN-CEB-SIN legs and only experienced minor delays.... their seats are super uncomfortable though.

Laowai

I've flown with 5J more than 20 times. Not a great airline, but so far ok for short flights. However not planning to try their long haul product as said above, their seats are bad and leg space tight.

fanger

I took them on four segments in the last three weeks. One was cancelled outright. The others were delayed 2-10 hours except for one which was "only" 55 min. In every case involving MNL the departure areas looked like the photo in the article linked above. No information is given in announcements other than "XXX flight will be further delayed" with an occasional "Due to late arrival of the turnaround aircraft." Rebooking was a nightmare. Employees are underinformed and underempowered. An incredible level of being agressively proactive was required to get to our destination, even with my wife speaking Filipino. She is of the opinion that we had a better result than most because we held foreign passports.

jchock1

I may be in the minority, but Cebu seemed like an OK airline on my BKK-MNL, MNL-KLO, MPH-MNL, and MNL-USU flights in Jan of this year. Two of the flights were an hour late, one due to weather, the other "air traffic control" in Manila, which I believed. The others were on time. The staff I encountered (gate agents, kiosk check-in helpers, FAs, etc.) were very helpful and friendly though somewhat overwhelmed in Manila. They were not overly proactive in advising of the delays, but when asked details (has the incoming flight departed and if so when) were able to tell me. Not sure why this information wasn't shared with everyone. The flight times and much lower fares worked for us and we'd fly them again without hesitation. Their on-time performance for December was 55%. Not sure what PAL or Air Asia's was for Philippines flights, but imagine not a whole lot better primarily due to MNL.

It sounds like from the article posted they had a major breakdown over Christmas, but the same thing has happened to many/most US airlines, where a computer system crashes leaving tens of thousands of people stranded or delayed, or a not-well-planned for weather event causes more issues than it should have.

chris19992

Cebu Pacific aren't so bad if you can use Cebu instead of Manila, still some delays but at least there they actually advertise it and try to keep people up to date.

wolf72

Manila has a horrible airport.

And that is, part of the problem as well.

meecal

Interesting read. I didn't realize how much drama occurred with 5J this Christmas. We flew them as part of our honeymoon. The experience at the check-in counter in MNL was atrocious but we managed to make our flight. The flights weren't delayed very much fortunately and they were acceptable. It was funny that the ~20yo flight attendant immediately asked us when we are going to have kids as soon as we told her we were on our honeymoon.

Indeed. Probably the worst airport I've ever been in, in my entire life.