all-expense paid overnight accommodation na, choosy ka pa?!

what's not to like about:

1. a free overnight stay in boracay?
2. at a well-known resort/hotel?
3. with free buffet dinner and breakfast?
4. inclusive of all transpo expenses?

sounds perfect, right? but i would like to borrow carlo aquino's infamous line in the vilma santos starrer, bata, bata, paano ka ginawa?

AKALA MO LANG WALA! PERO MERON! MERON! MERON!

we were supposed to be back in manila hours ago. thanks, but no, thanks to seair's i-don't-know-if-it-can-be-called-customer complaints handling, we are back here in la carmela for an extended overnight stay. that is, just 6 hours from checking out this afternoon.

looking at the fun part of it, the extra 1 day vacation seemed to be indeed a good thing. what was hard for us to accept was the way the problem was handled. allow me to let you in on what happened.

our original caticlan-manila flight was set at ETD 1620hrs, and boarding time was set at 1605hrs. we were at the crampy caticlan airport as early as around 3pm, and have completed the tedious manual checking in process as the baggage x-ray machines have all conked out. since it seemed the aircon was not enough to cool down the entire place, we decided to stay at the smoking area (which was, ironically, had a decent working ACU) and endure the time bathing in second-hand smoke while waiting for the boarding time call.

at around 3:55pm, we left for the waiting area. no call for our boarding time was announced at 4:05pm. what we kept on hearing were individual names being called to go to the check in counter, one at a time. at 4:15, fritz decided to inquire about the flight, but he was told there is going to be a delay, and they promised to announce through the paging system. which they did, and they even promised to make another announcement after 20 minutes. which never came.

at shortly before 5pm, i heard my name being called to report at the check in counter. upon arriving there, i was told that they will be arranging for our overnight accommodations as the flight has been cancelled already. the irony of it is that out of the 30+ passengers of the flight, there were only 11 of us who were left. apparently, for the passengers that were called before us, special arrangements have already been made for them to be able to go back to manila.

everything that ensued next was an exchange of complaints and non-sense replies. or at least, that is what it seemed to us. they cannot satisfactorily explain the reason why there are only 11 of us left, and how they decided who leaves and who stays. it was as if they ruled our lives and they had all the right to decide for us. and the argument lasted for more than 2 hours.

unfortunately, to cut the story short, we really never had any options but to stay, because of these reasons:

1. our flight was the last seair flight for the day
2. the other airlines are fully booked
3. caticlan airport doesn't operate/allow flights beyond 5pm
4. taking a manila flight via kalibo was out of the options as the flights are fully booked as well
5. the one who should be calling the shots for seair was nowhere to be contacted

well, i just hope my boss is reading this. and i hope this gets an approval for a half-day leave tomorrow.

and you know what, i just realized another thing tonight. it was sooooo difficult writing your blog with fingers crossed.