Airline snafu leaves RP team sans mountain-climbing gear

The Philippine Mount Everest team started their quest to conquer Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia yesterday via a harder route without their clothes and mountain-climbing gear, thanks to Cebu Pacific, which mistakenly sent their luggage to Guanzhou, China.

Arturo Valdez, who heads the seven-member team, told The STAR they will push ahead with the challenge offered by the Sabah Tourism Board because “we’ll lose face if we don’t.”

“We don’t know how it happened. What we know is that we have to go on our challenge without our gear and trusty equipment,” he said.

Valdez said they were able to borrow some mountaineering clothes, shoes and equipment from well-meaning Malaysians a few hours before they were set to proceed to Mount Kinabalu Park at 8 a.m.

The “Ferrata” trail that the team was supposed to follow to the top of Mount Kinabalu is said to be a direct route but entails more rock-climbing.

“We were able to find a shop that has some disposable underwear, so at least we’ll have fresh underwear,” he said. The team arrived in Malaysia at 7 p.m. Friday, then found out that their luggage had been sent to China.

Valdez said some of them will be “wearing office socks” when they start on the trail. He was referring to ANC news director Vince Rodriguez, who joined the team on the expedition.

The other members of the team are Erwin “Pastor” Emata, Philippine Coast Guard rescue doctor Ted Esguerra, Carina Dayondon, Janet Belarmino, and Fred Jamili.

As a former Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) undersecretary, Valdez said Cebu Pacific should take this incident as a lesson to shape up.

“I cannot let this pass,” he said. “Their service is deteriorating. I’m saying that as a former DOTC undersecretary who (knew) them to be very efficient when they started.”

Cebu Pacific vice president Candice Iyog said the reason for the mix-up was that an agent “had wrongly tagged the bags.” She said the bags were brought back to Manila yesterday morning and put on the next flight to Kota Kinabalu, but would not reach Valdez’s team before they start their expedition.

Iyog vowed the airline will review their systems to prevent the incident from happening again. – Rainier Allan Ronda