The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) expects to complete the rehabilitation of the aging Terminal 1 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) by January 2015.
According to Transportation Secretary Joseph Abaya, the rehabilitation of the country’s main airport, which started last month, will be over in time for the Apec Summit that year.
“Considering that it is the point of entry of most foreign tourists and our many overseas Filipino workers, we recognize the importance of improving these structures,” Abaya said during the induction of the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines’ board of directors.
The plan is moving along, with the installation of new equipment at the Naia Terminal 3 “to make it fully operational by the latter half of this year,” Abaya said.
The terminal 1 rehabilitation is being handled by DMCI Holdings, while work on Terminal 3 is being undertaken by Japan’s Takenaka Corp. Rehabilitation work on Terminal 3 is also considered crucial because the facility is only operating at half its full capacity of 13 million passengers a year.
“By then, we can transfer some international airlines from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3, which will make way for a less crowded Terminal 1,” Abaya explained.
Moving foreign airlines to Terminal 3, meanwhile, will be up to the carriers, he added. The objective is to bring down the capacity at the congested Naia 1 to its designed capacity of 4 million to 4.5 million passengers, from the current 7 to 8 million passengers.
Built in the 1970s, Terminal 1 currently serves as the gateway for foreign commercial carriers and is one of four terminals within the Naia complex—the country’s busiest airport, serving over 30 million passengers a year.
The rehabilitation work is meant to improve services, and is linked with the government’s broader goal of boosting tourism.
The Department of Tourism is looking to attract 10 million visitors to the country by 2016. The agency said 4.3 million tourists visited the Philippines in 2012.