Gundamaniac

I was fortunate enough to fly to Malaysia for the weekend. but what was most unfortunate was that I had to take a low-fare budget airline since all of my companions had already bought their tickets from the said airline. They got a very good deal on the plane fare, since Cebu Pacific was having a 1 peso ($0.02 usd) fare promo. however with all the tax, terminal fee, etc they’d still have to pay around $120usd, which would still be a good deal for an international flight.

don’t let the lively colours fool you, you’d probably get a better ride from a epileptic mule or the poor man’s gundam. ^^

< Warning: the rest of this blog entry will be devoted to my rants on the Cebu Pathetic Airlines. so if you are an avid supporter of Cebu Pacific you might not want to read on >

Like most airlines with a budget, Cebu Pacific uses the Airbus A320. I would expect this particular “short to mid” range passenger aircraft to be used on local flights but not for international flights. then again I shouldn’t have expected much since most (but not all) had paid one peso for their fare. People who paid more can’t expect to be seated in business class either since there’s usually no business class on budget airlines. So in the interest of getting better placed seats we checked in 5 hours before departure. but to my dismay the ground personnel was amazingly able to book 2 people on the same seat, and I just happened to be one of the 2. in the end I was able to sit on my designated seat only to find out that it was a useless-good-for-nothing-non-reclining seat. and when I got thirsty and ask for a glass of water, I had to fork over 50 pesos for an 8 pesos bottle of water. My impression on the captain was far from pleasant as well, when the plane hit a rather rough patch of turbulence and some people on the back gave out a small scream, there wasn’t any explanation made on the PA system to reassure passengers that their plane wouldn’t be falling down towards the sea below. and while lining up for the toilet right after my wife, the pilot decided to cut in line in front of me, enter the toilet while I was going in, and without even an “excuse me”.  I would have probably started a fist fight with the bastard if I wasn’t too tired since the flight was an odd hour red eye flight.  Fact is it was probably the most agonizing 3.5 hour flight I’ve ever experienced. and I couldn’t believe that I felt jetlag after flying to a country under the same time zone.