Strolling Airline Memory Lane with Farol

Romeo F.C. Farol is the author of a recently published 100 or so page work titled “Vignettes: On Board Asia’s First Airline”.
“Rome”, as he is known to friends, dwells on a career that was certainly not “built in one day”. Regardless of the nature and context of one’s former affiliation with Philippine Airlines, it is safe to say that there is a likelihood of finding something in this work that will tug quite strongly at an ex-PALer’s memory strings.
And memories abound indeed. Rome’s somewhat “stream of consciousness” recollections (that’s how it seemed to this reader) spans close to half a century of airline history and covers a gamut of events, highlights and areas of interest.
For aircraft buffs the piece discusses the various airplanes the airline inherited, acquired and used from the time of its founding thru the end of the 20th century.
Safety concerns, along with a recount of specific incidents including crashes, to which Rome had direct information access or even actual exposure to, are touched upon with an insider’s intimate knowledge of details and certainly opens a window into the always painful aftermath of accidents and crashes.
Rome’s long and well rounded actual work experience in various departments of the airline enables him to cover many aspects of daily fare, from cargo to reservations to ticketing, airport operations and finally his impressive stints in air operations and public relations. He not only covers significant highlights but also dives deep into some of the daily routine that are often overlooked and unappreciated but most often served as the very foundation of the PAL organization.
His most valuable contribution, to my mind, are his recollections of the people he worked with over the years many of whom actually helped build the airline from the ground up. As a former PALer who worked in the ‘60’s myself the names Adriano, Elicano, Verzosa-Santos, Saba, Munoz, Pabelico and others too many to mention, bring back images and memories of great significance to PAL’s success and the high regard the airline enjoyed in those days.
I worked with Rome for 4 years. He is one funny dude. Not silly funny, but more like a satirist who is able to deflate even the most sanctimonious with his instant, on-the-fly, nearly endless commentaries. I remember once at lunch with him that I actually guffawed so hard it was embarrassing. We were talking about one of our favorite vice presidents and using the comical nuances of the visayan accent and pronunciation (I, being identified as a Cebuano) he referred to the guy as “Wreck Paloma”.
Other ex-PALer’s who read this book will no doubt recall many instances and incidents worthy of note in their past careers. I have one I’d like to share. As an 18 year old new hire who lived in the maintenance shack at Lumbia airport in Cagayan de Oro I woke up at 6 a.m. one foggy and rainy morning to the sound of propellers revving in to stop on the tarmac. Strange to have one so early. Stranger still was that no one from PAL ground staff was on hand. So I walked to the plane ( a DC-3 cargo plane) and the captain came down and said he wanted all CDO bound cargo offloaded, the plane refueled and sent on their way ASAP.
I dragged a pushcart planeside and started offloading the newspaper bundles and 50 kilo film cans as best and fast as I could. Eventually, round about 7 a.m. the other employees had arrived. The heavy rains caused the Cagayan river to rise and render the bridge uncrossable for a few hours hence their delay in getting to the airport. The plane was ready to go a few minutes later. I sat down on one of the benches in the terminal to watch the plane take off. In the middle of its takeoff run the plane swerved to the left, hit an embankment and sent up a spoof of smoke. We all rushed to the site, helped the pilots out of the aircraft and put out a small fire that had started on one of the engines.
Later in the day we offloaded the rest of the cargo which consisted mostly of ice cream from Magnolia and crates of freshly printed 20 peso bills some which had partially burned.
Fast forward a couple of weeks later and we were called into the BRS’s office. There were a couple of NBI agents who started to ask us questions about the burnt 20 peso bills. What had happened, and the reason for the NBI inquiry, was that some of the bills ended up in circulation locally. After some digging they eventually found out how that happened. Apparently one of our co-workers, a porter (who has now passed away hence I will not disclose his name) who was once notorious as a prankster, had pocketed some of the bills, pasted 2 of the unburned parts together and spent it. Where? At the local nightclubs as tips to the hostesses! We all found this quite hilarious and obviously neither the Central Bank nor the NBI shared our sense of humor.
Life at PAL was not always just a bed of roses for many of us. We’ve had our share of office intrigues and many have been victims of petty and vindictive bosses who made our lives miserable even to a point of “flying the coop” and seeking out friendlier “skies”. Romeo F.C. Farol is one of those sturdy individuals who endured many difficult and challenging work circumstances and yet never lost his compass. Also kept intact was his eye for the absurd and the tongue for unbridled commentary. I’ve known him to be intelligent, insightful and incisive. He had a lawyer’s education and training but chose a different path, the often pioneering route that PAL had offered many who chose to cast their lot with the airline. He would have been quite successful as a lawyer (perhaps not as a diplomat like his late father) and we who once worked at PAL are all the better to have had Rome in our midst.