In a public hearing conducted recently by the House good government committee on the controversy-mired Terminal 3 project, Rep. Roque Ablan, chairman of the House inter parliamentary relations services, said that while the new terminal could accommodate bigger aircraft and big number of passengers, it has only one runway.
Ablan told the committee chaired by Rep. Ruy Elias Lopez that even under current conditions at the NAIA, planes have to make do with a single runway, resulting in costly delays. There is one runway each for international and domestic aircraft and it intersects each other, allowing only one plane to take off or land at any given time for safety reasons.
"I am an aircraft owner. Sometimes when I want to land in runway 13/31 (the domestic runway), I have to wait when an international passenger jet will land in runway 06/24 (the international runway). Or when I’m landing in runway 06/24, I have to wait until a domestic or private aircraft has landed in runway 13/31," the solon pointed out.
This physical limitation posed by a single runway to service international aircraft has raised serious doubts on the ability of the Terminal 3 to effectively handle the requirements of international airlines.
"The problem is we are building a bigger terminal but it cannot accommodate two or three aircraft simultaneously. It’s like building a big house with only one stairway," Ablan said.
Ablan offered a solution: "Why not let the airlines that want to operate in Terminal 3 to go there and those that want to operate or stay in Terminal 2 to remain there. The idea of putting everybody (international airlines) in Terminal 3 is commendable but we’re still operating under one runway."
He also said airlines should be allowed to choose their service operators and ground handlers for economic reasons. "It would be costly for our airlines to maintain two service groups, one for domestic and the other for international."
"I don’t think there will be any problem if the airlines would be allowed to get the ground handler that they want and not (be forced to) enter into exclusive service contracts with PIATCO (Philippine International Air Terminals Co., Inc.)," Ablan pointed out.
Ablan stressed that the present setup of Philippine Airlines wherein its international and domestic operations are under one terminal is most convenient to Filipino travellers and tourists. "Passengers disembarking from PAL international flights will just have to walk a short distance to transfer to their domestic flights. It will be more expensive and inconvenient if from Terminal 3 these passengers will go to the domestic airport for another flight home," he said.
A study conducted by the Aviation Safety Foundation also raised doubts on the projection of PIATCO, the operator of the Terminal 3, that 10 to 12 million international passengers would be utilizing the terminal annually.
The study stated that at best, NAIA can handle only about one aircraft movement every five minutes or 216 aircraft movements every 18-hour day or 76,900 movements per year of 356 days, allowing for typhoon and other airport closures. The PIATCO plan assumes a maximum aircraft movement of 73,000 per year.
"With domestic traffic reaching 5.5 million for 2001, an average load of 120 persons per landing or take off, domestic flights would use up 46,000 aircraft movements, leaving only 30,900 aircraft movements available for international. At an average of 250 persons load per aircraft, this translates to only 7.7 million international passengers per year," the study revealed.