Cebu Pacific on Wednesday attributed the difficulties and frustrations of its passengers to fleet availability issues affecting the global aviation industry along with specific environmental factors.
The Gokongwei-led airline said a global problem is impacting the airline industry specifically involving over 120 grounded Pratt and Whitney-powered Airbus aircraft around the world.
“While CEB provisioned double the level of recommended spare engines as early as last year, we were advised in March 2023 that we would no longer receive the spare engine support that Pratt and Whitney had previously indicated,” the airline said.
“Immediately upon receiving such advice, we sought to adjust our flight schedule accordingly to minimize the impact. A number of flights, which were scheduled and sold months in advance, inevitably had to be disrupted,” it added.
Also, the airline experienced a number of incidents such as ground damage from runway debris that additionally lengthened the grounding of aircraft.
“In total we have three aircraft grounded due to Pratt and Whitney (engine issues) and five aircraft long-term grounded due to other incidents. We will recover the five aircraft in the months ahead but the impact of the Pratt and Whitney engine shortage is something we have to plan for a longer time period,” Cebu Pacific said.
“Apart from these fleet-related matters, we have also entered the rainy season and have seen much higher occurrence of red lightning alerts. This requires the suspension of all flight and ground activities at the airport,” it said.
From April to June alone there have been 78 red lightning alerts raised, some lasting more than two hours, according to Cebu Pacific.
“We understand that it is our responsibility as a public service to manage these external issues and deliver on our promise to provide access to affordable and reliable flights. Unfortunately, the unprecedented issues we face have made it difficult to deliver on the customer promise and for this, we are deeply sorry,” the airline said.
