"My friend explains further that Philippine labor laws only allow a maximum of 6 months residency for non-Filipinos in any nature of employment. The time frame being set mainly to give the employer a chance to train a national to fill up the position."
so how did 5j manage to get expat CEO, COO, and others in engineering plus some also in ATR fleet? i'm sure this is also market-driven, ie, 5j has a mechanism to get foreigners if they needed/wanted to.