Philippine Airlines cancels 11 flights due to inadequate pilots

The Philippine Airlines (PAL) canceled at least 11 of its flights Saturday due to "inadequate" pilots, its spokesman Jonathan Gesmundo said.

The country's flag carrier apologized to its inconvenienced passengers affected by the disruption of several PAL flights due to inadequate flight deck crew to fly its Airbus A320 airplanes, Gesmundo said, adding the cancelled flights include three flights in Hong Kong, and eight domestic flights such as Manila to Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Bacolod and Iloilo and vice-versa.

"The indiscriminate resignation of PAL's A320 pilots for flying jobs abroad whose salaries PAL is unable to match, is in violation of their contracts with PAL as well as pertinent government regulations that require resigning pilots to give PAL six months prior notice to be able to train their replacements," PAL said in a statement.

PAL will soon file appropriate charges against pilots who chose not to report for work immediately after submitting resignation letters, it said.

"Most of the pilots still owe PAL the cost of their aviation school training, which run into millions of pesos per pilot," the management added.

PAL is currently adjusting its schedules by merging some flights, upgrading aircraft to a bigger type in order and fielding of management pilots to lessen the inconvenience to affected passengers, the company said.

Source: Xinhua