Some time back, this paper reported that President Aquino was encouraging the civil aviation authorities to work on getting our airlines out of the watchlists of the United States and Europe for failing to meet international aviation requirements for safety (“Get PH airlines soaring to US, Europe, Aquino orders CAAP,” Inquirer, 3/26/13). In 2009, the International Civil Aviation Organization found that our aviation standards did not meet international requirements and in 2010, the European Union banned all Philippine aircraft from its airports for serious and persistent noncompliance of our carriers with aircraft checks.
Anyone who has seen the documentary films produced by National Geographic about air crashes will come to the conclusion that an airplane is such a delicate machine that even if the tiniest part of it breaks—say, a bolt in the engine—the whole plane can come down crashing. In one of its episodes, National Geographic reported that a plane crashed because one of the pilot tubes, which measure the air speed, was occluded and so it did not indicate to the pilot the correct speed. And the pilot tube is a very little thing.
We can think that to keep a plane flying safely requires adherence to the culture of excellence by all the people involved in flying and maintaining the plane. All those concerned must pay attention to the smallest things and do their job very well.
Anything less will not do.
I would also like to think that the airline industry in our country can be a reflection of our culture in general. We are a people who tend to be satisfied with things that don’t work well or to make do with imperfections in systems or structures. Lamps may flicker, traffic lights may fail to turn on, faucets may get busted, roofs may leak, doors may be jammed, air conditioners may be noisy, walls may get dirty, queues may not be moving, trains and buses may be delayed. To all these the Filipino will just shrug his shoulder and smile—and life goes on.
There is something laudable about the resilience of the Filipino and his capacity for pain and suffering. But I think it is a defect of character if one does not pay attention to little things or do things well or fix them. We ought to foster a culture of excellence. I think that if we acquire this culture it’s not only our planes that will soar up in all the skies, it’s the Filipino himself who will.
—FR. CECILIO L. MAGSINO, cesmagsino@gmail.com