Construction of Clark budget terminal seen starting this year

MANILA, Philippines–THE government is planning to break ground on a new passenger terminal specifically for budget carriers at the Clark Freeport in Pampanga this year to cope with the rising number of passengers flying out of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA).

The new budget terminal will take three years to complete and will be able to handle about 10 million passengers a year. This will make Clark the second largest airport in the country, next to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia).

“At present, our terminal capacity is very limited. Our current passenger terminal is being expanded to serve 2.5 million passengers a year,” Clark International Airport Corp. president Victor Luciano said in an interview.

The new budget terminal will be an entirely different structure from the existing passenger terminal, although they will be linked.

The current DMIA’s expansion project, which would cost about P360 million and is up for completion next year, would more than double the airport’s current capacity of about 1 million passengers a year.

DMIA is expected to serve 750,000 passengers by the end of this year. By next year, Luciano said the number was seen to breach 1 million.

“AirAsia alone is expecting to have five million passengers out of Clark in the next four years,” Luciano said.

AirAsia Inc., the local unit of Malaysia’s AirAsia Berhad, has yet to start operations but it plans to fly to several domestic and regional destinations, including several points in Japan, out of DMIA.

The new terminal, which will be a separate project from the planned overall development of Clark as a premiere international gateway, may be included in the government’s list of public-private partnership (PPP) projects.

Luciano said funding for the new terminal might come from the national budget.

Other airlines that fly out of Clark are local carriers Cebu Pacific, Southeast Asian Airlines (SEAir) and AirPhil Express; South Korean companies’ Jin Air and Asiana Airlines, and Singapore’s Tiger Airways.

Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific has also expressed interest in setting up a hub in Clark, which is a more convenient airport than Manila for millions of Filipinos living in Northern and Central Luzon.