NAIA filled to capacity (1)

THE country’s goal of 10 million passengers last year could have been easily achieved had the country been able to put up the proper infrastructure, like night-capable provincial airports or a replacement for the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

This was not the case and now, we are having trouble accommodating even local flights at the NAIA. Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific, and Air Asia, are being asked to divert their Tacloban flights from NAIA to Clark.

The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) has signed several bilateral agreements with some countries. These are government-to-government agreements. Their specific privately owned carriers are needed to conduct regular flights for an exchange of flow of passengers and goods in both directions.

Last year, Korea applied to fly to Puerto Princesa, Palawan, but CAB has yet to give its imprimatur because none of our local airlines have shown interest to reciprocate. PAL already serves Pusan and Seoul, while Cebu Pacific also flies out of the South Korean capital.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) wangled a bilateral agreement last August, 2015, to fly to Manila but all the slots at the NAIA have already been filled up.

Moscow is one of the most interesting destinations that CAB had so far agreed to include in its “Open Skies” policy.

The Aquino administration had a “pocket” open skies policy, which liberalized the country’s airports, except the NAIA because the 33-year-old passenger terminal, has exceeded its capacity of 30 million a year, having recorded more than 36 million passengers in all of the four terminals last year.

Early this year, the country finally agreed to the ASEAN Open Sky Policy, paving the way for full third, fourth, and fifth-freedom rights for ASEAN carriers.

The Philippines was the last holdout to ratify Protocol 5 and 6 of the Multilateral Agreement on Air Services (MAAS), which will open up Manila to all Southeast Asian carriers.

So far, Aeroflot S7 and Transaero of Russia have conducted charter flights to the country for the last 10 years.

Charter flights are like testing the waters to find out if there are enough passengers for full-schedule operations to commence. (To be continued)