Trip ticked

I must say flying Cebu Pacific drives me crazy.

First, you have to wrestle with this low cost airline's booking system. The website is simple enough, and lets you navigate unimpeded through the various electronic options. The problem is when you've decided on your booking (having chosen, for this purpose, the cheapest available seats) and you press the button to confirm your choices.

A few seconds after you confirm, disaster. The system will crash, necessitating that you re-enter all the information you've painstakingly tried to encode a few minutes ago. Then, when you succeed in typing in your data for the second (or third) time, the same array of flights will be presented to you - but with a slight difference. This time, the prices for the flights you've chosen have magically increased!

Now, I don't necessarily know if this happens all the time, but I know this has happened to me twice already. And I hate to think I have the bad luck of deciding to log on at those times when the electronic fares are about to change. No, I'm not unlucky - it's so much more convenient to blame the carrier. Yup, there's a conspiracy to thwart ordinary consumers' attempts to book at rock-bottom prices. Just when a passengers is about to land that deal that's a steal, the program automatically shuts down, and then is programmed to increase the prices when the hapless passenger logs back in.

But that's not all. What's with the slogan about flying on time, 99% of the time? The few times I've flown the airline, it was always late! By my calculus, it was 90% late!

Case in point - the airline's newly introduced flights to Singapore.

I had the chance to try the new route last week. (Ok, I have to generously admit, I got the fares again through the web, and this time, the system didn't bog down.) We got to the airport for our departure, and lo and behold, it's a zoo. One hour before the scheduled flight, and the line's still a mile long. Some passengers are directed to check-in at other counters, because the regular Cebu Pacific counter can't accommodate the influx.

Check-in isn't the end of the experience. Next, is finding where to park yourself. In the meantime, the lounge for international passengers is still being used by Cathay Pacific, so where do Cebu Pacific passengers get to stay? Good question, one so baffling, even the ground crew doesn't know how to answer this one.

I see a Citibank vice president and her family making do with a couple of seats in a dingy corner by the corridor, and a big group of old Cebu (read - mestizo) clans have camped near her. It's disorganization-galore, and when boarding is announced, people scurry back and forth, trying to figure out which gate they're supposed to enter. Since the Cathay flight to Hong Kong is boarding, some end up mistakenly walking up the ramp to the jumbo jet. Needless to say, we departed late.

I wish I could say that the flight back was seamless - but unfortunately, that didn't happen. See, it turns out there's no such thing as a boarding announcement in Singapore's Budget Terminal. Passengers are expected to make their way to the plane thirty minutes before boarding, without anyone, except a few silent monitors, telling them it's time to board.

Now, if somebody had told me we had the responsibility of getting up and walking to our plane without need of prompting, sure, that would be easy. But that wasn't the case, and so come departure time, we had to hustle to get on board. To compound the problem, there wasn't any gate number printed on the ticket - all we had were four question marks printed on the appropriate space.

Turns out there was no need to worry - half the plane came in later than we did. Natch, the plane was delayed, and we straggled out on the tarmac of Cebu at 5 in the morning. Not a pleasant flight, that.

Now here I am, about to depart on another Cebu Pacific flight - and only because there wasn't any room left on Philippine Airlines' last flight out. I had to revoke my silent vow of never stepping foot on another Cebu Pacific plane after exactly six days. (At least, the promise was only made to myself - no harm done if I make an exception just this one time. Oh, and on the return trip.)