The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Youtube videos of Cebu Pacific airline’s dancing flight attendants has generated local and international buzz for the company’s upcoming initial public offering this month.

The video of female flight attendants dancing to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry songs while giving flight safety instructions got more than 8 million views on Youtube.

Gabriela called the act a ‘cheap marketing strategy’ that portrays women in a sexy manner to make business brisk.

Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Teddy Casino said the dance routing potentially violates the Labor Code. “It was certainly not what the flight attendants ever thought of doing when they applied for work. It may also violate the Magna Carta for Women and the airline safety standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization,” the solon said in a report.

Casino added that flight attendants are highly trained to deal with emergencies and not to dance in front of passengers.

Meanwhile, the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (FASAP), the union of rival airline company Philippine Airlines (PAL) viewed the dance instruction as “demeaning and undignified.” FASAP is in a row with PAL’s management over discrimination and unfair labor practices.

After the all-female dancing flight attendants video got negative feedbacks, a follow-up video featuring male flight attendants was released.

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Although Cebu Pacific Vice President for Marketing Candice Iyog said that the videos were uploaded by passengers and wasn’t a ‘gimmick’ by the airline management to drum up interest in its share sale, the videos would definitely help boost seat sales prior to the company’s IPO on October 12 to 19.

Shares at P125 each

Cebu Pacific’s parent company, the Gokongwei-owned Cebu Air and JG Summit Holdings Inc. are selling 31 percent or 214.63 million primary and secondary shares in the IPO at P125 per share.

Based on a memorandum released by the Philippine Stock Exchange, “Cebu Air plans to sell 30.66 million primary shares, 155.97 million secondary shares and another 27.99 million shares for over-allotment in case of strong demand.”

Of this, 70 percent will be sold to foreign investors and the rest for domestic buyers. Under Philippine laws, Filipino citizens must own at least 60 percent of domestic carriers. Reports said the IPO waswarmly received by foreign investors.

Cebu Air’s IPO is the largest in the country since conglomerate SM Investment raised P28 billion in 2005. The company has a fleet of 29 planes and employs about 600 attendants and plans to hire another 300.

Largest budget airline

Currently the largest local budget airline, Cebu Pacific plans to raise up to P26.8 billion to finance expansion plans and purchase of new aircrafts.

“The airline has allotted P9.11 billion of the total proceeds for pre-delivery payments of new Airbus A320 aircraft for the period 2010 to 2013. It has firm orders for 15 Airbus A320 aircraft, options for five Airbus A320 aircraft, two operating lease contracts and plan to acquire two additional Airbus A320 aircraft through lease or purchase. This should expand Cebu Air’s fleet from the current 29 to 47 by 2014,” Philstar.com reported.

For this year, it made a first-half profit of USD68.4 million, according to its IPO prospectus. It also carried more passengers than rival PAL on domestic routes in the period.

Data from the Civil Aeronautics Board showed that Cebu Pacific flew 5.09 million passengers for both domestic and international routes, beating PAL, which carried 4.9 million passengers.

Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan are joint global lead managers for the share sale, and ATRKimEng Capital Partners is the local lead underwriter. The company is tentatively listed as CEBU at the PSE.

The company intends to promote Manila as the hub for low-cost travel in Southeast Asia by further penetrating other Asian markets – China, Japan and Korea. In the next two years, Cebu Air plans to launch new services to Beijing, Brunei, Denpasar, Nagoya and Fukuoka.

Today the company started its 10.10.10 seat sale or P10 for domestic flights.