The Visa Collector

A blog about travelling with a Filipino passport, and life overseas

Tag Archives: MNL

Rethinking the terminal fee at Philippine airports

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If there is anything about going home to the Philippines that I really really hate, it’s dealing with the cash-only terminal fees at the airport.

The first time I ran into this was on my first return trip to Taiwan in 2000. The explanation they gave me for the fee was that since my ticket was purchased outside the Philippines, it did not include the terminal fee in the ticket price. So I had to fork out the funds myself — on the spot.

Over the years, I had learned to deal with this gargantuan incovenience by making sure I always had the required amount with me long before I got to the airport. But on my last visit to the Philippines after a lengthy hiatus, my initial calculations proved insufficient. The fees had gone up significantly, and I had to go through the expletive riddled experience of finding out that there were no ATMs past the secure zone of the security area . . .

. . . and that I had to exit the building . . . find an ATM . . . and then re- enter the security inspection line.

I typically arrive well ahead of my flight, so getting in the first time was a breeze. Not so after the trip to the ATM. By the time I returned to the security line it had grown to a very long slithering snake.

Virtually every foreigner I know who visits the Philippines for the first time, and who unfortunately didn’t have a friend or family member who was familiar with this procedural frakas, goes through the same W-T-F experience that I went through above.

This problem doesn’t kill anyone. Nobody gets hurt by this inconvenience (at least as far as I know. Has a drunk tourist ever let fists fly because of this?). But I maintain that it is still something that needs to be looked at. Here are some reasons off the top of my head:

It is counter-productive tourism to promotion efforts. This blatant display of inefficiency is the last thing tourists see as they leave the country. What do you think they will tell their peers about their experience? The Department of Tourism promotions budget for 2012 is P250M wouldn’t it be a shame for all that money to only bring in one-time-only visitors who don’t come back?

Delicadeza. Wikipilipinas describes this word as: “a sense of propriety refers to sensitivity regarding the limits of proper behavior or ethics in a situation. Filipinos try to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel mooched when I pay with these fees. It doesn’t matter how polite the people at the fee collectors are, these feel like superfluous fees because its just doesn’t make sense to collect them separately from the ticket . . . and in cash no less. No credit or debit cards allowed. Given how cash transactions are associated with efforts to avoid scrutiny . . . it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

This problem has been around for over a decade now. If a problem this simple can’t be addressed . . . how much more with even more complicated problems?

It’s time to speak up about this. Join the Facebook group below . . . tell your friends . . . and have your voices heard by the people in-charge who appear to be asleep at the switch:

Rethink the terminal fee at Philippine airports

Photos from NAIA Terminal 2, December 2010

 
Filed under Airports, Impressions
Jun 2, 2012

Phones as boarding passes

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My wife and I flew to my nephew’s wedding in New Jersey last month. While processing our online check-in, she noticed the mobile boarding pass option. Keen to try new things, she signed us up for it. I was new to this pass, and hadn’t read up on them by the time we got to the airport. So I walked up to the security line cold . . . not a particularly good idea.

I knew my wife emailed it to me, and that it involved a Quick Response (QR) code of some sort. So when the pre-screening attendant at the security line asked to see my pass I whipped out my iPhone  confidently . . . opened my email and looked for the code . . . and kept looking. I had to step out of the line to figure out what was going on.

Turns out the mail simply contained a link to the code. The image below on the left shows the email. Tapping on the the “Get mobile boarding document” opened a browser and voila . . . the boarding pass QR code appears. See image on the right.

At the San Francisco airport, I showed the code at three points: to the pre-screening attendant at the security line, to the TSA officer at the security line, and then finally at the departure gate. The latter two locations had code readers like this:

I usually switch my phone over to flight mode before boarding the plane. So as a precaution, I took a screen capture of my boarding pass before getting onboard. These are the images is used for this post.

The boarding pass is very convenient, and I intend to use it for my flights moving forward. But as with all things new, if you don’t take the time to figure out how it works before you use it . . . you will initially lose more time than you save.

Aug 12, 2011