Isabela 6th District Rep. Faustino “Inno” Dy V urged the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to revisit the guidelines it issued regarding the application of the 20% discount on airfares for students, saying on Monday that students around the country may have difficulty availing of the mandated discount as the guidelines require students to purchase airline tickets at an airline’s “organic ticketing office” to get the discounted airfares.
An “organic ticketing office” is a ticketing office directly managed and run by an airline.
“I believe this defeats the purpose of the law.”
“This would not be an issue if airlines had organic ticketing offices in all parts of the country,” said Dy.
“However, in the provinces, as a general rule airline tickets are sold by authorized sales agents like travel agencies, as airlines do not maintain organic ticketing offices there,” added the first-term legislator.
Dy revealed that one airline in particular only had organic ticketing offices in Metro Manila and a major city in the Visayas.
“Sayang dahil napakaganda ng layunin ng batas (it’s a shame because the objective of the law is laudable). But how can students in other parts of Luzon or Mindanao avail of these discounts if there are no organic ticketing offices in the places where they live? I believe this defeats the purpose of the law,” lamented the solon.
Section 3 of CAB Resolution No. 05 (AR05-2019) states that “a student, as herein defined, shall be entitled to a twenty percent (20%) discount on the regular base fare of domestic flights operated by airlines upon personal presentation of the following documents on their purchase of tickets in airlines’ organic ticketing offices located in the Philippines.”
Dy, one of the youngest legislators in the country, said that many students in the country need to travel by air to represent their schools in national academic competitions or to participate in national sporting meets.
“If we really want to make it easier for our students to utilize these discounts, then CAB should review their guidelines and consider amending them so that all airlines’ authorized ticketing agents can extend the student fare discounts.”