Cebu Pacific internal flight in the Philippines.

[Butch]

I’ll edit and upload some rather boring pics later, but in essence Cebu Pacific are the main budget carrier in the RP alongside Air Asia and PAL. 

With cebu, usually the tickets are booked online with extra weight allowance. The website is far from simple , but online check in can be made and boarding passes etc printed out with comparative ease. there are specific online check in counters which you can use, along with the regular ones. As some advice, I’d suggest the regular check in counter as inevitably there’s always some muppet who has got his or a small detail wrong and then holds the queue up for ages.
 

Carry on baggage is 7kg, for hold baggage it’s 650 peso ONE WAY (Depending upon route) , so if doing a return ensure you book the extra on both tickets. It is possible to do this at the airport for 2x the charge and you then need to go to the excess baggage counter and then back to the check in, which, if you’ve ever experienced a Cebu Pacific check in it’s like bedlam but arguably worse. Chaos doesn’t begin to describe it in the smaller airports, although NAIA is well organised and not a problem, however if flying from say, Caticlan which we did, it’s a melee with people pushing in and generally being assholes.

goes without saying that you need to keep all receipts. Once checked in, buses arrive and ferry you to the aircraft, and boarding done from each end according to seat numbers, thus you de bus, and then people are cross crossing on the apron in 35 degree heat depending upon which stairs they need to climb. Some don’t bother though and just walk through the aircraft.

Now, the staff at the Airport are great, Cebu CC and ground crew are awesome, helpful and very patient. Their online customer service is awful, non existent in fact and a major headache if you need to do anything online with them. Always a case of crossing the T and dotting the I when making your booking.

 

seating is good, decent legroom and they’re a faux leather / vinyl affair. No IFE but USB charging ports on the A320’s .

 

Seats are standard economy fare. Some tickets come with an in flight meal, ours did and it was a pesto sandwich and bottle of green tea, the lettuce was wilted and pretty horrid, but once removed it filled a gap which was about all it did, then again it was better than some airline food I’ve tried.

Don’t expect any Cebu Pacific flight to leave on time, they just don’t. Our outward ex MNL was 1 hour late, inward left 35 min late.

Overall for a budget carrier the price point was very good, just over 2000 php per pax return Manila to Caticlan with meal, plus 1200php for one checked bag at 20kg.

[Horizondave]

1 hour ago, Butch said:

I’ll edit and upload some rather boring pics later, but in essence Cebu Pacific are the main budget carrier in the RP alongside Air Asia and PAL. 

With cebu, usually the tickets are booked online with extra weight allowance. The website is far from simple , but online check in can be made and boarding passes etc printed out with comparative ease. there are specific online check in counters which you can use, along with the regular ones. As some advice, I’d suggest the regular check in counter as inevitably there’s always some muppet who has got his or a small detail wrong and then holds the queue up for ages.
 

Carry on baggage is 7kg, for hold baggage it’s 650 peso ONE WAY (Depending upon route) , so if doing a return ensure you book the extra on both tickets. It is possible to do this at the airport for 2x the charge and you then need to go to the excess baggage counter and then back to the check in, which, if you’ve ever experienced a Cebu Pacific check in it’s like bedlam but arguably worse. Chaos doesn’t begin to describe it in the smaller airports, although NAIA is well organised and not a problem, however if flying from say, Caticlan which we did, it’s a melee with people pushing in and generally being assholes.

goes without saying that you need to keep all receipts. Once checked in, buses arrive and ferry you to the aircraft, and boarding done from each end according to seat numbers, thus you de bus, and then people are cross crossing on the apron in 35 degree heat depending upon which stairs they need to climb. Some don’t bother though and just walk through the aircraft.

Now, the staff at the Airport are great, Cebu CC and ground crew are awesome, helpful and very patient. Their online customer service is awful, non existent in fact and a major headache if you need to do anything online with them. Always a case of crossing the T and dotting the I when making your booking.

 

seating is good, decent legroom and they’re a faux leather / vinyl affair. No IFE but USB charging ports on the A320’s .

 

Seats are standard economy fare. Some tickets come with an in flight meal, ours did and it was a pesto sandwich and bottle of green tea, the lettuce was wilted and pretty horrid, but once removed it filled a gap which was about all it did, then again it was better than some airline food I’ve tried.

Don’t expect any Cebu Pacific flight to leave on time, they just don’t. Our outward ex MNL was 1 hour late, inward left 35 min late.

Overall for a budget carrier the price point was very good, just over 2000 php per pax return Manila to Caticlan with meal, plus 1200php for one checked bag at 20kg.

I remember Caticlan when you got off your plane, walked the 30 meters to collect your baggage and exited through the single building before getting on a trike to the jetty. Then you got the banca across to boat station 2 where you jumped in the water and waded knee deep the final 20 meters to the beach. Porters were there to carry your bags or, in my case, the wife for about 20 pesos.

I used to arrive on Asian Spirit or, even better, on a Seair Let L-410 Turbolet, that was an amazing experience. I think the largest plane I landed in Caticlan on was an ATR although a BAE 146 was the only jet at the time landing there. I remember taking off in a storm on a LET L410 from Caticlan to Cebu and we were being pushed all over the place, we just made it over the trees at the end of the runway. 

They must have extended the runway now if they are operating A320 etc.

Preferable to Kalibo for getting there although cheaper to take a flight to Kalibo.

[Butch]

2 hours ago, Horizondave said:

I remember Caticlan when you got off your plane, walked the 30 meters to collect your baggage and exited through the single building before getting on a trike to the jetty. Then you got the banca across to boat station 2 where you jumped in the water and waded knee deep the final 20 meters to the beach. Porters were there to carry your bags or, in my case, the wife for about 20 pesos.

I used to arrive on Asian Spirit or, even better, on a Seair Let L-410 Turbolet, that was an amazing experience. I think the largest plane I landed in Caticlan on was an ATR although a BAE 146 was the only jet at the time landing there. I remember taking off in a storm on a LET L410 from Caticlan to Cebu and we were being pushed all over the place, we just made it over the trees at the end of the runway. 

They must have extended the runway now if they are operating A320 etc.

Preferable to Kalibo for getting there although cheaper to take a flight to Kalibo.

Yep, still walk to the terminal and get baggage, the trike station is just across the road. It was like the Trike formula 1 GP at one point with everyone leaving.

I’ve only recently been a visitor to Boracay over the last 5 years. I really should have visited the place 22 years ago when the Mrs suggested it, but I really don’t travel well on a banca, even the new “ferries” had me puking up on the 15 minute journey , that’s how bad I get.

it’s very much commercialised now, stations 1-3 pretty busy all the time in peak season. I remember my Mrs telling me that back in the day there  was no mobile signal anywhere on the island for years. We didn’t stay at a station, we were about 50m from Diniwid Beach which was awesome, very quiet and fresh buko off the tree for breakfast. There was a derelict 5 bedroom beach house behind us, just sold for 90 million peso to a Taiwanese businessman. Crazy.