Sotto vows to withhold CAB budget for making airline a flag carrier

Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III warned yesterday the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) would have a zero budget in 2003 if it could not justify the approval of an airline company without any airplane and without any franchise as national flag carrier.

Sotto said that Sen. Joker Arroyo, chairman of a finance subcommittee in charge of the DOTC budget, has already endorsed the budget sanctions if CAB could not explain why CLA, a non-existent and non-operating airline company, was named a national flag carrier.

"The government lost at least $7.5 million in potential tourism revenue because of this," Sotto lamented.

President Arroyo approved the naming of CLA as a national flag carrier based on the recommendation of the CAB.

Senator Arroyo, also chairman of the Senate committee on public services, had already directed CAB executive director Manuel San Jose to explain how an airline company that is not operating and without a single airplane, could be named a national flag carrier.

The Arroyo committee learned of the fiasco when Transportation Undersecretary Arturo Valdez said that a request for additional slots of national flag carriers at the Narita airport in Japan was turned down because of the non-use of the 4-1/2 slots allotted to CLA.

Valdez said he was unaware of the status of CLA as a national flag carrier and of the grant of slots to the company in Japan.

Sotto said that had an operational national flag carrier like the Philippine Airlines been granted the slots, the government could have earned at least $$7.5 million in revenues.

Sotto explained that a slot is equivalent to a reserved parking space for an airplane on a weekly basis.

Arroyo and Sotto both called for a revamp of the CAB to avoid a repeat of the CLA fiasco.

The CLA was reportedly organized by businessman Pepito Alvarez with several Japanese investors as partners. – Efren Danao