MANILA: Lack of pilots on Saturday forced Philippine Airlines (PAL), the country’s national flag carrier, to cancel at least 11 of its domestic flights, a PAL spokesman admitted.

Jonathan Gesmundo also admitted the problem caused a long delay in 13 other domestic PAL flights as well as five regional and international flights that has inconvenienced thousands of passengers.

The main cause, he said, is that most of the pilots manning PAL’s’Airbus 320 jetliners have deserted the company for better paying and more tempting salaries offered by foreign airlines.

PAL belongs to the business empire of Filipino-Chinese tycoon Lucio Tan, which also includes the country’s biggest cigarette manufacturing plant, housing and real estate, shopping malls, education and hotels.

“In the past days, the pilots have e not been reporting for duty,” Gesmundo said in interviews with Metro Manila-based radio and television stations.

“This has caused problems for us.” 

“The indiscriminate resignation of the pilots for flying jobs whose salaries PAL is unable to match, is in violation of their contracts with PAL as well as with pertinent government regulations that require resigning pilots to give PAL six months to train their replacements,” it said.

He apologised to the passengers who were affected by flight cancellations and delays even as he assured that management is doing everything it could to normalise operations soonest.

In a separate press statement, management pointed out the indiscriminate resignations of its Airbus320 pilots for flying jobs abroad with salaries that PAL could not match have been the root cause of the problem.

But management also insisted such resignations have violated not only the contracts that the pilots signed with PAL but also government regulations.

The pilots, the statement said, are required to give management a prior notice of at least six months so as to give time to train their replacements.

In this light, management warned it would file the appropriate charges against the “erring” pilots.

Meanwhile, the Reverend Broderick Pabillo, the auxiliary bishop of the Catholic archdiocese of Manila, sought the direct intervention of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino before the problem could get out of hand.

Pabillo, a member of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), traced the problem to the decision of management to restructure the airline due to heavy financial losses.

Such restructuring, Pabillo emphasised, could lead to the dismissal of about 3,000 of PAL’s total workforce of 8,000.

In June, the Department of Labour and Management allowed management to outsource critical operations as part of its restructuring plan amid strong protests from its various labour groups.

Pabillo urged labour department officials to make a thorough review of the order and prevent management from dismissing the affected employees.

Gesmundo said the airline was adjusting its schedule and will probably bring in bigger aircraft to accommodate the stranded passengers.