MS Columns | At the time, prior to March 2020, Mr. Lucio Tan reached an agreement with the Philippine government for the sale of the airline, the national flag-carrier – Asia’s oldest airline. READ:
“Fish or cut bait” is an admonition familiar to people who engage in the sport of fishing. The admonition simply means that if, after waiting a long time and having thrown a lot of bait into the water, he still has not had a bite, a fisherman either should stop throwing more bait into the water – pack up, in other words – or should keep on waiting for the fish to bite.
At the time, prior to March 2020, that Mr. Tan reached an agreement with the Philippine government for the sale of the airline, the national flag-carrier – Asia’s oldest airline, having been founded by Col. Andres Soriano in 1946 – was saddled with debt resulting from many decades of malperformance by both private-sector and government managers, bad policymaking, abuse by the government and corruption.
The fourth-richest man in this country lost no time taking steps to reduce PAL’s financial instability and gradually restore it to operational normalcy. Top-management changes were ordered, arrangements were made for the purchase or lease of new aircraft and the expansion of PAL’s route matrix was put into effect. Then a disaster that no one had foreseen happened.
The first manifestation of the let’s-continue-fishing decision was the bankruptcy petition filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York by PHI , PAL’s operation. Attached to the bankruptcy petition was a reorganization plan approved by all – 100 percent – of PAL’s creditors, which included primary aircraft manufacturers and lessors, equipment providers and maintainers, overhaul service providers and certain funded lenders.