Hi Hive,
After a long hiatus, today felt like a day to connect with the Hive again and share a bit of my life during the past months.
I used to be active on the Hive until last September. Then things started easing up here in the Philippines in regards to confinement and I was able to resume working which gave me less time to connect on here.
The good thing with the confinement easing up is that some people who had been stuck inside a small house or apartment in the city for months, were eager to get out and get a breath of fresh air. How to do this better than to enjoy a gyrocopter flight at about 500ft above the beautiful landscape of South Cebu.
Things starting to look good for me as I was getting more and more enquiries about my services and in results, more and more booking. Of course it wasn't as much as before the pandemic started but at least, I was working again and most importantly, I was back in the air.
Things were starting to pick up and other the strict health protocols I had to put in place following the requirements from the government, it almost looked like the business was going to be ok and that I would at least be able to pay some bills at the end of the month. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. As my schedule got busier, a fellow gyrocopter pilot who I used to see regularly in the past was involved in an accident early November while taking off from his private runway and sadly he lost his life. This quickly made the headlines in the local news and all of a sudden all my bookings were cancelled. I did my best in explaining to the people that the reason for the accident was not the gyrocopter and that it is a safe aircraft, but most of them were now too scared to fly.
I can understand that. To be honest, if I was in their shoes, I'd most likely feel the same way.
As business was struggling again in November and then December, more problems started to happen. You see, in order to be allowed to keep the aircraft flying, I need to renew its registration every year with the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines and this year, it became a problem. A change in the regulation means that it is now compulsory to subscribe a third party liability insurance. This is a normal thing to do you'd say and I couldn't agree more with you. This is the way it is in most countries around the world. The problem here is that there are no insurance companies willing to cover ultralight aircrafts. So how can one subscribe to a cover if no one is willing to offer one??? After weeks of reasearch, I did eventually find one, only one, which would be willing to provide me with a third party liability cover for my gyrocopter, but they knew they were the only ones, so of course, the premium was really high and the coverage amount was ridiculously low.
I can't accept that.
So after thinking about it and discussing it with my wife @discoveringarni for several days, we decided that it wasn't worth it and it was best for us to close the business for good on the last day of 2020.
Around the second week of December, we announced our closing date on our FB page and then bookings started coming back... I couldn't believe it, I was suddenly getting more bookings than I had ever had, simply because people knew we were about to close down.
December ended up being a good month and when the 31st came, I couldn't help but feel sad. My wife and I had worked for more than 4 years on this business and it was suddenly coming to an end.
The positive side on that day is that my last passengers were some friends of ours, @ybanezkim26 (picture above) and @millycf1976 (picture below) who I believe enjoyed their experience.
Since then, I had a few private flights with friends. One of them with @scubahead, for which you might have seen a summary of on here, during the last couple of weeks.
Now, the gyrocopter is for sale, and @discoveringarni and I are trying to figure out what's next for us. With the whole tourism industry being shut down here in the Philippines, our options are very limited but we are hopeful we can find our calling and bounce back soon.
Some of you may know me as one of the people behind #WhoAreTheyPhilippines with the account @whoaretheyph. For several months now, I have neglected this
activity and several persons have asked me about it. Now that the weather has gotten better around here and as soon as Arni and I have moved house, I'm hoping to get back on my scooter and start featuring people again. It may not be as often as every week to start with but I think it will be great to put some smiles on people's faces again as well as on mine. I do need a bit of an uplift.
WATP #16 - Knizalyn in front of her house
That's all for now. Thanks for reading and I'm going to try to be more active on Hive again.
Till next time...