Let’s have a dual airport system

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IT is nice to hear once in a while somebody who talks sense, someone who has the credentials and the qualification to be believable because he had “been there, done that.”

We are referring to Roberto “Bobby” de Ocampo, finance secretary under former President Fidel V. Ramos and ex-president of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). He was one of the speakers at a gathering of travel, tourism, airport and airline industry stakeholders. The conference was about the Airport Policy Brief.

He said 21 years ago, he made a proposal to have a dual airport system in the Philippines, much like what he saw in Washington, DC, where he lived for 10 years.

He said under a dual airport system, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) would gradually give way by having NAIA 2 to be the domestic terminal and NAIA 3 as an interim international airport.

A modular terminal would be set up at Clark, which would be built up as a tourism hub “and finally move there while NAIA2 and NAIA3 become a combination of domestic airport and terminal for flights by Philippine Airlines.

He said that is the logic behind the Dulles and Reagan Airports in DC.

“Those that are faraway land in Dulles and some flights that are more or less nearby also land in Reagan.”

“Twenty one years have passed and we’ve spent a lot of money and a lot of time for consultant to say something that I said without getting paid,” he said partly in jest.

But how do you transfer from Manila to Clark? A common question among many Filipinos, which he answers: “Of course, you build a railway.”

Another persistent question that de Ocampo also answered is the expense of building a railway.

“You can either look at it as an expense or you can look at it as an investment,” the financial expert said.

He added that other countries have done the same thing “for their great benefit.”

According to de Ocampo, “everything that is between the airports and their city that is its target as a main community becomes an area of development... (To be continued)