Budget air terminal eyed; PAL joins move to NAIA 3
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:58:00 07/24/2008
After a six-year delay in the opening of Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA 3), the government is considering a terminal for budget carriers, officials said Wednesday.
The budget terminal could be completed by mid-2009 and host the budget carriers Asian Spirit and South East Asian Airline, said airport general manager Alfonso Cusi.
“We need to provide a little allowance for growth because right now we have severe overcrowding,” Cusi said.
“Our low-cost operators are [going] regional so we need to keep in step with them,” he added without giving financial arrangements and other details.
Plans for the new terminal were announced after the $600-million Terminal 3 opened to limited traffic early Tuesday morning.
Cusi said the terminal would handle a few flights by budget carrier Cebu Pacific Air but operations would be ramped up next week with the transfer of Cebu Pacific’s domestic operations, which consist of its 110 daily flights.
This Thursday, Philippine Airlines (PAL) will move its low-fare unit PAL Express and its affiliate Air Philippines into Terminal 3.
A PAL statement said that starting Thursday all PAL Express flights from Manila would operate from Terminal 3. These include flights to the Caticlan gateway to the resort island of Boracay, to Busuanga Island in Palawan province, to Calbayog City in Samar, San Jose City in Occidental Mindoro, Surigao and Virac in Catanduanes. The return flights will also disembark at the new terminal.
All Air Philippines flights will shift their departure and arrival operations to Terminal 3 this Thursday. These include the services to the cities of Bacolod, Dumaguete, Iloilo, Naga, Puerto Princesa, Ozamiz and Tuguegarao.
In all, PAL Express will operate 75 flights a week and Air Philippines 56 a week at Terminal 3. Additional service, including PAL Express’ forthcoming service to Catarman in Northern Samar, scheduled to start August 1, will also operate from Terminal 3.
Regular PAL domestic and international flights using jet aircraft will still operate from PAL’s current hub at NAIA Terminal 2.
Built by a consortium of Philippine and Japanese investors and Germany’s Fraport AG, Terminal 3 has been at the center of bitter legal wrangling since it was completed in 2003.
While sitting empty, it was expropriated by the government, which claimed certain provisions in the contract were onerous and that the structure was substandard. The Supreme Court declared the contract null and void.
Fraport sued the government to try to get back its investment worth $425 million, but the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes dismissed the claim, saying it had no jurisdiction.
The 28-gate Terminal 3, with 140 check-in counters and 188 immigration counters, is designed to handle some 13 million passengers a year. With a report from Agence France-Presse; with editing by INQUIRER.net
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