Willing to pay

Skyjet Airlines, a local carrier that flies missionary routes, is hoping to resolve an issue involving one of its planes that was seized by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) because of unpaid duties.

Magnum Air, which operates Skyjet, is now owned by the Tieng family of the Solar Group. The BOC took possession of the aircraft in question, an 80seater BAE-146 in May 2017.

Depending on how the company’s appeal goes, the plane may be placed on the auction block.

Patrick Tan, CEO of Skyjet, told Biz Buzz that the issue over the plane was actually among other irregularities they found following an internal compliance audit and corporate restructuring that started in 2016.

Appropriate legal action, he said, had been filed against those involved.

According to Tan, the new management very much wanted to settle their liabilities over the aircraft. But he noted that the P90 million cited by the government included penalties, which he insisted the company should not shoulder. The actual figure, he said, was closer to P30 million.

“We want to settle the amount,” he said.

Tan, nevertheless, noted that Skyjet’s business remains healthy and that the airline was profitable.

It still has three other BAE146s, serving routes such as Batanes, Coron and Siargao, and they are considering ordering more. —MIGUEL R. CAMUS

NEX readies debut

The newest office building along Ayala Avenue in Makati City is almost ready to open its doors to the public.

Biz Buzz learned that NEX Tower—the flagship project of the Nova Group, owned by businessman Ricardo Cuer

va— wouldbe completed ahead of schedule by September this year.

When this opens, it will deliver 38,400 square meters of gross leasable area to the Makati commercial market which has a very tight vacancy rate of 3 percent at the moment.

This early, NEX Tower has already been recognized by UKbased Asia Pacific Property Awards for having the best office architecture in the country, and being the best commercial high-rise development.

And why not? NEX Tower is designed by SOM, the renowned architecture firm that designed 1 World Trade Center in New York and Burj al Khalifa in Dubai.

Those awards were more than enough to convince insurance giant, Manulife, to lease nine floors and thus become the building’s anchor tenant (moving from its present location at LKG Tower just across the street).

Jones Lang Lasalle, the multinational real estate services company is also establishing its new headquarters at NEX Tower, while a major coworking and shared office player will be taking several floors.

Now, let’s hope the Philippine office property market holds. —DAXIM L. LUCAS

Retailing lechon

Philippine Seven Corp. (PSC), the local franchisor of 7Eleven convenience stores and the dominant player in this market, is giving fast-food outlets a run for their money.

PSC, which has 2,386 stores all over the Philippines as of end-June, has dine-in seats in 90 percent of its locations catering to on-the-go diners. It now serves fried chicken in 400 of its stores. It may soon offer chicken legs and even Cebuano lechon (roast pig).

“We always go where our customers want us to go. And yes, people do like to sit down and eat,” PSC president Jose Victor

Paterno said at the sidelines of the company’s annual stockholders meeting yesterday. “We’re different from fast-food [chains] in that we don’t cook on-site.”

Paterno said PSC was now studying the possibility of retailing lechon and in talks with a Cebuano lechon supplier. The salty Cebuano lechon, which can be eaten with a lot of rice, is seen to be a potential hit.

“It’s very hard to cook at home, even harder than fried chicken, and lasts up to only three hours,” Paterno said.

When one buys lechon over the counter, Paterno said it was likely that it had been there the whole day and would thus tend to be soggy. But with 7-Eleven dividing the lechon among a few hundred stores, PSC believes it may be possible to sell it still crispy.

Based on customer behavior collated by PSC, customers visit and purchase from 7-Eleven one to two times a week while the frequency is much higher in central business districts, where customers visit at least once a day. PSC generates a lot of business from business process outsourcing (BPO) employees, who operate on a different time zone, and now also from offshore gaming firms. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA

PAL on a roll

The good news just keeps coming for flag carrier Philip- pine Airlines (PAL).

PAL announced that it was now among the Top 50 airlines in the world, based on a survey by Skytrax.

It was ranked No. 49 in 2018 in what appears to be a continuation of an uptrend considering it was No. 67 last year and No. 83 in 2016.

That survey, which involved some 20 million passengers and 335 airlines, came just months after PAL was named a four-star airline, also by Skytrax.

“This latest win shows how far we have come in working to transform our airline, and this victory is especially sweet because it reflects the votes of our beloved customers,” PAL president Jaime Bautista said. —MIGUEL R. CAMUS INQ