SEEKING to alleviate congestion at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the Philippine Department of Transport and Communications (DOTC) is taking steps to tone down domestic operations at the country’s main international gateway.
Firstly, DOTC has ruled that no additional domestic services are to be mounted during NAIA’s peak operating period, which stretches from 07:00 – 16:00 daily.
Nina Fernandez, a sales & operations officer with Friendship Tours & Resorts, an inbound operator dedicated to the Japanese market, said: “Reducing flights in the morning is okay, but (reducing flights) in the afternoon might create complications for our clients with connecting flights. Otherwise, Japanese flights arrive between 14:00 and 17:00 at NAIA, so reducing flights (to ease congestion) won’t benefit us.”
Philippine transportation secretary Mar Roxas is also pondering the redeployment of existing connecting services – from NAIA to domestic destinations such as Batanes, El Nido and Amanpulo – to an airstrip in Sangley Point, Cavite, about 30km away. Civil aviation authorities are currently sorting out guidelines for the move.
SEAir COO, Patrick Tan, told TTG Asia e-Daily that the airline’s Manila-Basco (Batanes) and Manila-Busuanga (Coron, Palawan) flights, which are operated using Dornier 328 aircraft, were unlikely to be affected by the proposed changes.
Instead, services likely to be bumped off from NAIA to an alternative airport were “non-standard, non-scheduled” charter flights, he explained.
