According to the "Manila Standard Today", Cebu Pacific has yet again hit the news when one of its aircraft smashed five runway edge lights whilst landing at Manila's NAIA last Thursday afternoon. This makes a total of three landing accidents in less than two weeks and this latest one, like the first, went unreported to CAAP which is required by international aviation law. The aircraft involved in Thursday's accident has been impounded and its two pilots were suspended pending an investigation. Law makers are calling for stiff sanctions to be imposed on the airline: Prospero Nograles, who represents Davao City, is calling on the Department of Transport to suspend all Cebu Pacific flights pending the outcome of an investigation into these recent accidents whilst Akbayan Representative Walden Bello said the company should “shape up or ship out of the airline industry” if it could not ensure that mechanisms were in place to ensure the safety of its passengers. The airline mandates that its aircraft depart their stands within 30 minutes of arrival which places a lot of pressure on both its flight and ground crews especially those flights that carry a lot of freight since it doesn't containerise freight or baggage; "niceties" such as the reporting of incidents are overlooked.
I am not any sort of pilot; I do follow some aviation incident investigations because they have some relevance to shipping - particularly issues that turn on cockpit resource management ("CRM") in the jargon. What worries me most about Philippines domestic aviation are the repeated late descents - this is almost a tolerated practice and is very, very dangerous.
