New PAL campaign rallies market

Philippine Airlines has launched a twin campaign – ‘Fly the Flag’ and ‘A Call for Excellence’ – aimed at rallying the market behind the flag carrier in the face of numerous challenges coinciding with the crucial peak and post Christmas travel period.

Fly the Flag taps into the nationalistic sentiment in PAL’s major overseas markets – the balikbayan (returning Filipino migrants) sector in the U.S. West Coast and Australia, and the legion of Filipino workers based in East Asia and the Middle East.

A Call for Excellence, PAL’s newest internal thrust, on the other hand, exhorts the PAL family to continue delivering excellent service to customers through a service culture that’s innately Filipino – warm, hospitable and caring.

"Fly the Flag is intended to be a vehicle for expressing patriotic pride, in spite of the recent setbacks the Filipino has undergone. A Call for Excellence refocuses the airline’s resources and energy to a higher level of service,” said PAL president Avelino L. Zapanta.

The Christmas travel rush was an opportune time to set the campaign in motion. Already, the PAL family has began donning Fly the Flag T-shirts and buttons at all airports, ticket offices and other PAL offices nationwide.

“In these twin campaigns, we are telling our audiences: PAL is far from perfect but it has improved tremendously,” Mr. Zapanta added.

PAL has traditionally enjoyed a strong franchise with Filipino travelers. More than three-quarters of the airline’s international passengers are ethnic Filipino and PAL is the leading carrier on some important routes, including trans-Pacific, Japan and Hong Kong.

But a recent spate of external developments threatens to erode PAL’s customer base. The restoration last September of a controversial air services agreement with Taiwan, which allows excessive sixth-freedom carriage, has put at risk PAL’s valuable trans-Pacific market.

And the declaration of an “open skies” policy in October could undermine not only PAL’s recovery but also the survival of the domestic aviation industry.