Civil Aeronautics Board Moves from Level 19 to Level 18; Passengers Checking Ticket Prices Find No Noticeable Difference

From Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

MANILA — The Civil Aeronautics Board announced Thursday that domestic airline fuel surcharges would decrease from Level 19 to Level 18 effective May 1, a reduction that the agency described as providing “consumer relief” and that passengers described as the kind of announcement that requires looking up what Level 18 means in order to know whether to feel relieved.

Under Level 18, domestic flight surcharges range from PHP 593 to PHP 1,734, down from the Level 19 range that applied for the previous two weeks. International surcharges adjust correspondingly on a scale that the CAB publishes in a format that is technically readable and practically requires a reference document to interpret in real time at a ticket booking window.

The Level System Explained

The Civil Aeronautics Board’s fuel surcharge level system uses numbered tiers calibrated to jet fuel prices, adjusting every two weeks based on the Singapore Kerosene index. The system produces numerically precise outcomes — Level 18 versus Level 19 — that communicate technical accuracy and limited intuitive meaning to the traveling public, which has historically responded to surcharge level announcements the way it responds to most regulatory communications: with the awareness that something has been announced and the approximate understanding that it affects a number somewhere in the ticket price.

“I saw that the fuel surcharge went down,” said Divina Capulong, 34, of Mandaluyong, who was checking ticket prices to Cebu. “The ticket I’m looking at is PHP 3,200. It was PHP 3,400 last month. So something happened. Whether it was the surcharge or the base fare or the timing I could not tell you.”

Ms. Capulong said she was going to book the ticket anyway, because her mother’s birthday was in Cebu and fuel surcharge levels were not a variable in that calculation.

The Energy Context

The surcharge reduction arrives during the Philippines’ declared national energy emergency, which was triggered by fuel shortages and price pressures from Middle East supply disruptions. The Philippine News Agency reported that electricity rates are also set to ease in the next billing cycle as the Energy Regulatory Commission accelerates refunds and rolls out regulatory measures to cushion consumers from recent price increases.

The pattern of surcharge-then-slight-relief-then-note-from-agency is the energy emergency’s communication cycle: the emergency is announced, the pressure is real, the measures are announced, the relief is partial, the next development is pending. Consumers participate in this cycle as the people to whom the cushioning is being applied, a role that involves receiving announcements and paying whatever the resulting price is.

CHED’s Position on Tuition

Separately, Commission on Higher Education Chairperson Shirley Agrupis stated that increasing tuition fees at public and private universities is “not timely” given the energy emergency. The statement was welcomed by students, who noted that tuition increases are also not timely during non-energy-emergencies, and who expressed hope that the “not timely” assessment would continue to apply in future periods when the energy emergency has concluded and a different justification for the timing assessment might be required.

The OFW Dimension

The Department of Social Welfare and Development confirmed it is assisting repatriated and stranded Overseas Filipino Workers affected by the Middle East geopolitical crisis. OWWA and CHED simultaneously signed an agreement to help OFWs earn college degrees faster by recognizing years of work experience. The coordination between repatriation assistance and educational credential recognition reflects the specific challenge of being a labor-exporting country during a Middle East crisis: the workers come home, they need support, and the support includes pathways that make their return something other than simply a reversal of departure.

More Philippine policy satire: NewsThump.

The Civil Aeronautics Board’s level system also interacts with the broader question of domestic aviation accessibility in the Philippines, where air travel is the primary practical alternative to inter-island ferry travel for most inter-regional journeys. The surge charge system, which adjusts with global fuel prices, means that domestic air travel costs in the Philippines fluctuate with geopolitical events in the Middle East in ways that are passed directly to consumers rather than absorbed by airlines or subsidized by the government. The current reduction from Level 19 to Level 18 is a market mechanism working as designed. Whether the market mechanism produces the domestic connectivity that an archipelagic nation’s development requires is a policy question that the CAB’s technical function does not itself answer.

The Philippines continues. The agencies sign agreements. The commissions announce adjustments. The weather comes. The workers march. The bridges get repaired and the railings get replaced and the next thing happens after the last thing. This is the Filipino political and economic cycle, running at the pace of a nation that is too large and too complex and too much in the middle of everything for any single development to be the last development before things are resolved. Things are never resolved. Things are managed. The management is the story, told in press briefings and senate hearings and barangay meetings and the specific silence of people waiting for the next bill to confirm what the announcement promised. The country keeps moving. The next announcement is already being drafted. The work of governance is daily. The work of journalism is daily. The work of living in Metro Manila is daily. All three happen simultaneously, at the intersection of the structural and the immediate, the announced and the experienced, the policy language and the jeepney stuck in traffic behind it.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/