Airport is window to a country

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas 

It was heartening to know that Philippine tourism continues to grow rapidly, with Secretary Ramon Jimenez reporting that a record 854,187 tourists visited the country in January and February this year, a 10-percent increase over the same period last year.

In addition, Jimenez said that for the first time in many years, tourist arrivals breached the 400,000 monthly arrival mark, with 418,108 visitors in February. “Our tourism numbers are now reaching unprecedented heights. We have a target of 5.5 million this year and 10 million by 2016,” Jimenez said.

There are good reasons for Jimenez’s optimism. Resorts and hotels are sprouting all over the country and nearly all provinces have developed or are developing their own tourist attractions. The DOT has been successfully promoting tourism with its aggressive “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign all over the world. Travel magazines and TV shows are beginning to notice the country’s tourism potential, with writers and travelers giving very high marks to some of our more popular destinations, such as Boracay, Palawan Underground River, Bohol, El Nido in Palawan, Siargao Island, and many more.

All these positive developments point to more and more tourists coming over to see what the Philippines has to offer. And there lies the problem.

Will the country’s small and outdated airports be able to handle the 10 million tourists that the Department of Tourism expects in 2016?

At the present size and condition of the country’s gateway, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, and its inadequate runways and taxiways, and the other smaller international airports, it would seem difficult to handle even the 5.5 million visitors targeted this year.

In a primer on the country’s airports in June 2012, then Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas acknowledged the problem.

“We recognize the huge challenge stemming from the country’s air fleet having doubled from 62 aircraft in 2008 to 119 aircraft this year. Each of these planes flew at least three times a day to accommodate more than 29 million passengers in 2011, up from only 18 million in 2006,” Roxas said.

For this reason, he said, NAIA on average has 48 takeoffs and landings during the peak operating hours from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. NAIA has crisscrossing runways that handler an average of only 36 takeoffs and landings every hour. This results in the delay of 12 remaining flights for a particular hour. To improve air traffic, the DOTC has approved the construction of two Rapid Exit Taxiways within NAIA at a total cost of P600 million.

Authorities know that NAIA’s 440 hectares of land space can no longer handle any kind of expansion, and so they have set their eyes on the former Clark Air Base, which has two existing parallel runways and 2,000 hectares of land space that offers much room for expansion. But for it to be acceptable to foreign airlines and, of course, the passengers, a high-speed rail system, similar to the Hong Kong Airport Express, has to be built to connect Metro Manila with the Clark International Airport. Clark is 80 kilometers from Manila and that would mean at least two hours of travel.

The Aquino administration has wavered on making Clark, now known as Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, the alternative for NAIA because obviously the government does not have the money to build both the airport and the $10-billion rail transit system, the International Air Transport Association (the grouping of the world’s biggest airlines) opposes it, and even PAL doesn’t want it.

The government has also set aside P17.5 billion for the expansion of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, but DOTC regulations on airport ownership, which limits 33% private equity, have discouraged investors.

The Philippine Airlines announced last year its plan to build its own huge, modern airport at a cost of $6 billion in an undisclosed 2,000-hectare location that is nearer than Pampanga’s Clark but decided to shelve the plan a few months later, citing uncertainty in government policy on airport ownership.

So after all the talks on new airports, the country is back to the old, inadequate NAIA in congested Metro Manila.

Last week, former Tourism Secretary Dick Gordon, the man originally responsible for the tourism upbeat in the country with his WOW program, pushed for the conversion of the two former American bases – Subic and Clark – into world class international airports to unclog the air traffic at NAIA.

“We should look at addressing the congestion at the NAIA, not only because of the inconvenience caused to travelers by the hours’ delay of flights, but also as an opportunity to bring development north of Metro Manila,” Gordon said.

I was in Manila recently and although I was impressed by the improvement in terms of courteous and fast service by immigration, customs and airport personnel, the relative orderliness and cleanliness in the airport’s arrival area, I was disappointed with the long lines in check-in, immigration and security counters in the departure area.

A country’s airport is the travelers’ first window (sometimes the only window in the case of transit passengers) to any country. If the airport is dirty, crowded and chaotic, the impression that the traveler gets is that the country is also dirty, poor, and ill-governed. If the airport employees and officials are rude and corrupt, the traveler will think that most of the people of that country are rude and corrupt.

Clearly, the 10-million target of the Department of Tourism would encounter a very real obstacle in the country’s inadequate and outdated airports, and the government will have to be more decisive in this area if it is really serious in making the Philippines a tourism mecca in Asia.

(valabelgas@aol.com)