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| The PAL flight was almost empty when the couple flew into Manila on Sept 6 (PAL website) |
A Filipino couple based in Hong Kong had their recent vacation in Palawan ruined, as they became the latest to fall victims to in-flight theft, which appeared to have occurred aboard a Philippine Airlines flight that flew them to Manila early on September 6.
Stolen during the flight were three credit cards belonging to Mark
(not his real name), which were used by the culprits to buy a number of items
in Malaysia which altogether cost 70,800 RM (Malaysian Ringgit) (HK$ 127,500 or
Php 913,000).
His wife, Anne (not her real name) recalls a sense
of foreboding when their original flight from Hong Kong on September 5 was delayed
due to the T8 being raised with the approach of Super Typhoon Yagi. They were
cleared for departure early the next day, at 12:30am.
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Anne and Mark, who were then headed to Puerto
Princesa, took some selfies before
take-off to assure their children that they could finally leave. From the
pictures she shared, it could be seen that the PAL flight was wide open, with rows
of empty seats around them.
Despite this, they noticed that two Chinese girls seated
elsewhere took the seats in front and behind them, both by the window. Around
them, the seats were occupied by what Anne described as Chinese-looking
passengers who on hindsight, looked like lookouts to her.
Mark, whose work required him to travel frequently,
put their two carry-on bags and his personal bag on the overhead bin, while
Anne put hers under the seat in front of her. The flight was smooth but
sometime during the ride, both fell asleep.
Anne says, “They probably took his entire bag at the
back when we took a nap. They took the cards in a wallet hidden at the bottom
of the bag. No way they can just get it (wallet).”
The couple arrived in Palawan early on Sept. 6 and
it was not until around midnight of Sept 8 that they realized that Mark’s HSBC Visa card and American Express credit card had been stolen. They spent the entire night and
early the next morning calling up the banks to dispute the charges. They also
filed a police report and executed an affidavit of loss on the same day.
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| The two stolen HSBC Visa cards were used to buy gadgets and pay for food |
Yesterday, Sept. 10, they headed back to Manila, and along the way Mark realized his HSBC Philippine credit card was also stolen, so they filed another report with the police at Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Anne said that because Mark was using his Philippine
phone he did not immediately see the bank notifications about the charges made
to his credit cards, which he could only access on his Hong Kong phone.
Typically, the thieves wasted no time using the
stolen cards to go on a shopping spree in Kuala Lumpur. On Mark’s Amex cards,
the thieves spent RM18,700 on Lamer cosmetics; and at a Prada shop, they used
the card twice for purchases that came up to RM12,500 and RM10,000.
His HSBC cards were used separately to pay a bill at
Ching Mong Tang for RM19,800, and Tech Heaven for RM9,800.
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| The police report on the complaint they filed in Puerto Princesa |
Anne says that while
she and Mark are anxious to get the unauthorized purchases reversed, they also
want to send out a warning to others, especially their fellow Filipino
travelers, to make sure they don’t go through the same traumatic experience.
They are also looking at PAL to help identify the Chinese-looking passengers who sat near them, in hopes that the culprits who caused them so much trauma would be caught and brought to justice.
The couple’s nightmare comes close on the heels of two recent inflight thefts reported by Hong Kong media, and warnings from the police in late 2023 about a rise in the number of such cases.
The two aircraft thefts both happened on Aug 26, with one being widely reported as it resulted to the arrest of a Mainland Chinese man who allegedly stole a $330,000 Rolex watch, thousands of dollars in cash and credit cards belonging to a fellow passenger. The victim discovered the theft just before deplaning from the Hong Kong Express flight from Danang, Vietnam, and immediately alerted the crew.
The other incident involved a Mainland traveler whose credit card was reportedly stolen as he slept on a VietAir flight from Danang to Hong Kong. Although he managed to report the card lost as soon as he saw notifications on his phone about transactions totaling $36,000 being made on it, no arrests had been made.
Such cases are not rare. As early as October 2023, the police had sounded the alarm about a surge in in-flight thefts, as it announced a series of arrests related to a syndicate that were targeting passengers’ credit cards on airliners bound for the city.
The police said it recorded
13 such cases in the first nine months of the year, after just two incidents in
2022, one in 2021 and five in 2020.
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