I remember my positive reaction after hearing this from Commissioner of Immigration Alipio Fernandez way back in 2005. I was the President/CEO of Clark International Airport Corporation that time and the airport was the host to Low Cost Carrier operations. Because of increasing numbers and our target of maintaining 23 minutes on the ground time for the LCCs in the most comfortable and effective way for the passengers, we have constantly been testing, implementing and enforcing optimum integration among the different agencies of government, airline staff, ground handlers, fuel providers, service and retail outlets and concessionaires and terminal management and operations personnel at the Passenger Terminal.
We have gone way past Clark during the more than two years since I moved over to Mactan Cebu. We have gone beyond the 70 International Flights weekly already since the 46 flights weekly in 2005. And now Mactan Cebu International Airport’s development objective is to serve the full spectrum of airline types and create the means to assure full synergy of all operators and locators in the airport.
The Legacy (5 star) Airlines will continue to provide full range of services to its passengers and will be concentrating in the medium to long range intercontinental routes. Such airlines will use subsidiaries that will serve the regional and domestic legs, either in its full service or low cost models. In the domestic scene, the third generation Turbo-Prop Aircraft is becoming the mainstay of Low Cost Carriers. We envision other airlines to start operating at Mactan.
As Mactan Cebu gears itself to realize its potential as a major hub, recent developments in the world have strengthened this vision. While we expected flights to slow down this year, our January operations in domestic operations gave us a lift as flights even increased by a big 51 percent from 995 last January to 1,506 this time. We still had a 4 percent increase in international flights, too.
Because we needed to be more integrated in our planning and operations, and be more efficient in providing services, the time was really ripe for a planning workshop among all sectors in the Department of Transportation and Communications. We just had a set of two-day workshops: the first in Clark and the second in Davao.
The first two days focused on looking at each sector’s accomplishments over the years and getting the most of available resources and guidance based on scenarios, to continue and complete vital projects in harmony with each other. So the Air, Maritime, Road, Railway, Communications and Transportation Security sectors completed their planning framework in Clark.
The next two days concentrated in Regional Integration of the sectors. We at Region 7, and with regions 6 and 8, worked together in fleshing out problem areas and working on the multi-modal connections of the transport sectors.
Many of the inputs that are part of MCIAA’s methodology in the quest to becoming the ultimate hub, came from these type of workshops and participating in world fora, as well as site inspections of multi-awarded airports of distinction.