Gov’t to reconsider Clark as premier gateway

Transportation Secretary Jose Emilio “Jun” Abaya: On the hunt

MANILA, Philippines—The government is taking a second look at plans to replace Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) with a new facility in Clark, which several groups have criticized as too far from the country’s capital.

Transportation Secretary Jose Emilio “Jun” Abaya said administration officials were now on the hunt for a possible new location for a new Naia, which has struggled to keep up with rising passenger demand due to space limitations.

To solve Naia’s immediate congestion problems, Abaya said the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) was studying new technologies that would allow more frequent take-off and landing of planes in Manila.

“There is a new technology that we can adopt. We can lessen gaps between landings,” Abaya said.

He was responding to questions regarding the construction of a second rapid-entry taxiway at Naia’s runways. The new taxiway will allow planes to more quickly get to and away from passenger terminals to free up runways needed by planes that are landing or taking off.

“If that technology works, there might be no need for (the new taxiway),” Abaya said. The Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) said Naia’s perpendicular runways handle about 40 take-offs and landings—collectively referred to as actions—an hour.

Abaya claimed that using new computer systems that would allow planes to take off and land more quickly without comprising safety could increase the number of actions to 75 an hour, or nearly doubling Naia’s runway capacity.

“But the problem we see with that is we can land as much planes as we want, but we might not have enough passenger terminals to absorb the extra traffic,” Abaya said.

He said Naia’s terminals 1, 2 and 3, as well as the old Manila domestic airport, already run at full capacity. “There will be a need for terminal expansion,” he said. “We are already at the edge of the cliff. It will be worse when (Tourism) Secretary (Ramon) Jimenez brings in more tourists,” he added.

The tourism department wants to increase the number of international tourists to the Philippines to 10 million by 2016, up from just three million at the start of the Aquino administration in 2010.

The plan to move Naia to Clark has been around for nearly two decades since former President Ramos issued EO 174 in 1994 to designate the former US military base as the future site of the country’s premier international gateway.

However, International Air Transport Authority (Iata) officials, in a recent visit to Manila, asked President Aquino to reconsider plans to move the country’s biggest airport to Clark. Iata, echoing calls by its only local member Philippine Airlines (PAL), said Clark was too far from Manila to be a viable option.

The group representing the world’s top airlines likewise said the government’s plan to build a multibillion-dollar high-speed railway system to bridge the 80-kilometer distance between Manila and Clark might be too expensive for a developing nation like the Philippines.

Another problem the government needed to address, Abaya said, was the presence of a bird sanctuary at a small mangrove forest in Las Piñas, just a few hundred meters away from Naia’s runways.