Another black eye

Last month, travel website hawaaianislands.com once again ranked the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) as among the worst airports in Asia and the world.

Nothing new. For the longest time, NAIA, which is the main gateway to the Philippines, has consistently been included in the list of the world’s worst airports.

The travel website analyzed the sentiment of 1,500 Google reviews for over 500 airports across the world and identified the most stressful airports. Delays, long queues, and crying babies were just among the many reasons cited by passengers as making air travel stressful, not to mention turbulence, baggage claim, and costly beverage on the flight.

NAIA, with 57.8 percent of its passenger reviews indicating stress, ranked the third most stressful airport in Southeast Asia and Oceania, next only to Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport in Australia (58.98 percent) and Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Vietnam (60.13 percent). The region had an average stress level of 34 percent.

Three other airports in the Philippines were analyzed, but were not included on the worst airport list in the region. These were Mactan-Cebu International Airport (38.9 percent), Subic Bay International Airport (30.8 percent), and Francisco Bangoy International Airport in Davao City (22.1 percent).

Meanwhile, travel website Guide to Sleeping in Airports described NAIA as a large and often frustrating airport even as it advised travellers to expect to wait in numerous long lines on their way to their flight. It also noted that some shops and restaurants accept cash only, forcing travellrs to look for ATMs inside the airport.

Worse, it warned passengers of scams and to take care of their belongings due to numerous reports of bullet-planting scams, broken CCTVs, and general theft.

In May, global luggage storage app Bounce once again cited NAIA as the worst airport in the world out of the 38 airports included in the study for business class travellers. It said that the airport is a congested hub, with immigration and security queues excessive, comfort for transfer passengers low, terminal spaces with poor airconditioning, limited facilities and dining choices to name a few.

Then came Jan. 1, 2023.

According to the Department of Transportation, around 65,000 international and domestic airline passengers were affected as 361 flights were either cancelled, diverted or delayed when a severe power outage downed the air navigation system of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) resulting in loss of communication, radio, radar, and internet at NAIA.

Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista explained that the primary cause identified was a problem with the power supply and the degraded uninterrupted power supply, which had no link to the commercial power, and had to be connected to the other manually. The secondary problem was the power surge due to the power outage which affected the equipment.

The two incidents affected CAAP’s Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC), which went down at 9:49 a.m. and was completely restored 10 hours later. The ATMC serves as the facility where personnel control and oversee all inbound and outbound flights within the Philippine airspace.

Without a working air traffic management system, controllers would not be able to move aircrafts safely and efficiently through the airspace.

But despite the importance of air traffic control, one article reported that the CAAP itself admitted that its system is already outdated. Singapore, Bautista said, is at least 10 years ahead. The system was introduced in the Philippines in 2010 but was implemented only in 2018 making it already in its midlife.

To upgrade the country’s air traffic management system and to prevent any flight disruptions, more than P13 billion is needed, Bautista said.

Given its sorry state, we do not know when it will conk out again. And that makes it very scary and dangerous to say the least.

But even without this latest black eye to hit NAIA, there is no doubt in everyone’s mind that we need a bigger and better airport.

Urban planner Architect Felino Palafox even pointed out that the Manila Bay Region which includes the National Capital Region, Central Luzon, and the Calabarzon Region and has an estimated 60 million population by 2050, needs six airports.

Dubai, which has less than four million people, is in fact building its second airport that will be the largest in the world for 220 million passengers a year – the combined capacity of London’s Heathrow and Chicago’s O’Hare.

I feel for Secretary Bautista considering the myriad of problems that he inherited. And this is just air transportation. We are not even going to start talking about land and sea transportation, which are facing similar if not bigger problems.

As an airline company top executive, I’m sure that Bautista is very much aware of the problems of the air transport system in the country and the solutions to these problems. Unfortunately, most of these solutions need lots of money and political will.

NAIA is a ticking time bomb. Our government should not wait for a major catastrophe to happen before it takes action.

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