Decommissioning NAIA
Following the crash landing of a Xiamen Airlines plane at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, no less than the general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), Ed Monreal, admitted during a TV interview that the solution to avoiding a repeat of the incident (200 flights were cancelled, 17 were diverted to Clark and Cebu, and thousands of passengers stranded due to a closed runway) was to have a second runway for NAIA.
Unfortunately, he said, there was no room for a second runway at NAIA.
Even the Department of Transportation said that the disruption to air travel caused by the runway’s closure highlighted the need to develop new primary gateways.
San Miguel Corp. (SMC) earlier submitted a P735billion unsolicited proposal to build the Bulacan International Airport in an area covering 1,168 hectares – several times bigger than NAIA. The proposal has been approved by the NEDA Investments Coordination Committee (ICC) and is awaiting final approval by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) board headed by President Duterte.
While the NAIA has four passenger terminals built around a single runway, the SMC project plans to build four parallel runways (with provisions for two more) that can handle 100 million passengers yearly. And all these can be made possible in a matter of six years.
As part of the proposal, SMC will also build an 8.4-kilometer expressway linking the airport to the North Luzon Expressway in Marilao, Bulacan. All these, at no cost to the government or to taxpayers.
It goes without saying that NAIA is already operating well over capacity. It currently serves 37 million passengers a year versus a combined capacity of the four terminals of 35 million. It is projected that by 2020, passenger arrivals will reach 49 million and by 2050, 146 million.
On the other hand, the SMC-proposed airport can easily accommodate 100 million passengers per year, expandable to 200 million.
NAIA’s runway capacity is also overstretched. While its current capacity is at 45 movements per hour, actual demand as of 2015 was already at 55. By 2022, demand will outstrip by double the amount the number of movements at present, or to 103.
There was an earlier proposal from the Cavite local government to develop the Sangley Point airport as replacement to NAIA but according to reports, the proposal is a no go as far as the DOTr is concerned since the proponent lacks the technical capability to implement it.
Does it make sense to keep NAIA while a new ultramodern and ultra-efficient airport will be available just a few minutes away from Metro Manila? Imagine the 625 hectares in valuable land (three times the size of Bonifacio Global City) that will be freed up with an estimated value of P325 billion and that can be developed or sold by government?
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