MANILA -- Since it's been years since I last took Philippine Airlines for international travel, I am happy to report that our national carrier is still one of the best in the aviation world -- in terms of safety record, excellent service and on-time departures and arrivals. The PR 103 flight that we took from Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, September 23, departed LAX about 11:15 p.m., LA time, and in about 13.5 hours, it landed smoothly on the tarmac of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at 3:48 a.m. Manila time.
There was no refueling stopover in Guam that would have added some 30 minutes to the flight time, and the reason, I deduced from the PAL ground crew in LAX, was that the Boeing 747-400, although full, was not carrying too many baggage, making the jetliner less thirsty for aviation fuel.
I am not saying that flying over the Pacific Ocean for 13 hours is a cakewalk. Imagine being cooped in your seat, in the confines of a few cubic feet of space, where your dexterity is put to the test all the time even for the simplest of tasks, like reaching for the copy of Mabuhay in-flight magazine in the bin in front of you, and you would agree with me that flying, although quicker, is not the most comfortable way of getting from point A to point B.
When I plopped down my 135-lb. body on Seat no. 70H, little did I know who would occupy the two other seats to my right. I was glad that I got an aisle seat because I anticipated some unusual number of trips to the lavatory to take a leak. I find out who my seatmates would be a few minutes after I had stowed my hand-carry baggage in the overhead bin. They are an elderly couple from Long Beach, as I found out after a couple of mini-conversations with the Sasutils. They are originally from Carcar, Cebu.
I originally stated that I anticipated an unusual number of trips to the lavatory, but that did not take into account the hyperactivity of Mrs. Sasutil's bladder. When I ask her 10 hours into our flight, how many times she visited the lavatories aft of our seats, she said, very apologetically, that she went about ten times. That's quite a lot of visits, especially for me, who had to reposition my aching little body every time she went through that tiny space that was occupied by my cramping legs. Not to say that during all those times, I am trying to induce my body to go to sleep. Just imagine getting roused from a shallow unconscious state, and you would understand my predicament.
I have never been a big fan of airline food, PAL's included, for the simple reason that they are very far from my idea of home cooking. Quite understandable. The meals are pathetic attempts to give the passengers some form of sustenance during the long flights, but my beef is that airplane food is just that: little packages of culinary disasters that are being passed off as food. This is not an altogether capricious accusation against airliners and their meal policies. I do understand that these meals had to be turned out en masse by unknown vendors whose culinary attributes are beyond the investigative capabilities of the more discerning passengers like moi.
On Friday morning, over Wake Island, the cabin attendants ( formerly stewardesses and stewards) served three different varieties of breakfast. Being that I am a Filipino food fan, I opted for the tapa-scrambled-egg-friend-rice combo. It was a disastrous choice. The tapa's taste was farthest from the standards that I have been accustomed to as a Filipino gourmand. It could have been prepared by an American from, say, Downey, or Elk Grove, California, who had no idea how tapang baka (beef jerky) should taste.
The dinner is a much better deal, in my opinion, given that it came in a plastic-cum aluminum foil container that kept the warmth in. My choice for dinner was chicken. It is a chicken with peas and potato casserole; which tasted like chicken pie, minus the crust and the thick cream gravy. But it is, by leap and bounds, a better entree than the tapa I had for breakfast.
There was a time during the 70s and early 80s when I made most of my air miles flying to cities in the Visayas and Mindanao, and during these times I noted that these stewardesses were mostly pretty. Apparently that changed through the intervening years. Today, as in our PAL PR 103 flight, I note that the cabin crew is more ordinary looking than in the day. No outstanding lookers; no sharp-looking mestizo gentlemen. Just well-built, healthy men and women whose physical attributes border on the everyday. Not that it is bad. In fact, because there is no outstanding beauty among the stewardesses, it made me concentrate on the food rather than ogling them. Having said that, I am very impressed with the cabin crew's courtesy, efficiency and attention to the needs of the passengers.
I am also impressed at their versatility. As cabin crews, these men and women are expected to be great hosts, always conscious of the comfort of the passengers. They are also expected to be dexterous due to the fact that when they begin serving the meals, they negotiate an aisle so narrow (less than two feet) that if they are not attentive, the food carts that they are pushing are liable to run over the digits of some napping passengers whose feet have strayed out to the aisle.
Moreover, these men and women are expected to know their public relations (small talk, an occasional corny joke, etc.) to engage the passengers. And lastly, they also should know marketing, accounting, public speaking, and some training in galley operations. Two hours before landing in Manila, some of our crew members distribute warm, steaming scented towels to wipe our faces and hands with. It is a welcome treat. Then they begin collecting the headphones and their plastic containers. After that, they collect the blankets, and all the trash that we manage to pile in the seat bins.
Their marketing skills come into play when they roll the carts along the aisle of the 747, this time hawking duty-free items like wines and liquor, cigarettes, perfumes, and the like. As they are making their pitches for the duty free items, I consult the Boeing 747-400 terrain and water landing emergency sheet. It said the following items are prohibited for terrain and water emergency landings: ladies' purses, ladies' high-heeled shoes, and lighted cigarettes. Who has time to light a cigarette in an emergency like a water landing? And what happens to the ladies' purses left behind? As for ladies' shoes, I understand they they can poke holes on the emergency escape chutes if they did not take their shoes off.
As we descended to an altitude of around 20,000 feet, about 1.5 hours into our on-time landing at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, I engaged the Satutils in a friendly, let-us-get-to-know-each-other-better conversation. Mrs. Satutil, as I deduced, suffers from diabetes, and she probably does not take her medications regularly. I know because I too has Type 2 diabetes. I know that if I missed my Metformin or my Glucotrol, my kidneys react and my bladder follows suit, making me go several times at night. Mrs. Satutil, upon returning from her many sorties to the lavatory, says to me apologetically in accented Tagalog, "Ang dalas kong magdaan," which translates to English this way, "I pass very often." Which is correct on both counts. Mr. Satutil, the quieter of the couple sits closest to the window. He too passes in front of my small domain a few times, but he does not say a word and wakes me up by tapping my arms.
Imagine what the cramped space in front of you can do to every movement or task that you are attempting to make. When you get up to stretch your legs, you realize that you can't stand straight because the passenger in front of you has his seat reclined to the maximum. I am lucky in that the same passenger did not stow his hand-carry luggage under his seat. That way I can stretch my legs under his seat. Oh, what a relief. But sooner or later, your feet would seek another space to keep from cramping, and the only free space that's available is on the edge of the aisle, where your feet are liable to be stepped on, or worse, get hit by a food cart.
Space is always a premium in a modern commercial aircraft, and the huge Boeing 747-400 is no exception. I believe the 400 designation means the number of passengers it can accommodate, and that's the rub. In an attempt to carry as many passengers as possible, the aircraft had to be designed with maximum space utilization in mind. This aircraft has several pods of lavatories (four each per pod) and three, or possibly four galleys in the economy (Fiesta) class. One of the galleys is right behind me, slightly to the left, so I am very close to the area where the cabin crews congregate. For one that's an advantage when you call for assistance; it's also a curse if you are trying your very best to get some shuteye.
I am never one to get a good night's sleep during a trans-Pacific flight. But my daughter and my wife, who are on seats 30 J and K, complain to me that they too can not fall asleep because two ladies are constantly gabbing behind them. To drown out their chit-chat, Justine, maxed the volume up on the radio while listening to the pop channel. To keep me calm, I tune in to the classical channel, alternating with the jazz.
When we land at NAIA on time at 3:48 a.m., Manila time, the temperature is 78 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not so bad considering that it was a scorching 98 degrees in LA when we left on Wednesday. But what gets you in Manila is the high humidity. And the raucous traffic situation, even at 6:30 a.m., after my brother-in-law arrives in a cab to pick us up. Check in at immigrations is uneventful, but quite slow, but it took much longer to pluck our check-in baggage at Carousel no. 5.
As for the traffic and the Filipino cab, jeepney, and tricycle drivers, I say, I would rather be in New York. But that is a blog for another day.
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