MANILA, Philippines - Transportation Secretary Manuel Roxas II believes the 140-hectare Sangley Point airport in Cavite cannot be a viable alternative to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Pasay City as the main gateway to the Philippines.
Speaking to reporters at the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) in Mandaluyong, Roxas said expanding Sangley Point airport to allow the layout of another parallel and independent runway would entail the reclamation of a huge swath of Manila Bay in Manila and Cavite.
“Sangley is probably going to be a single runway facility for GenAv (general aviation),” he said.
“Otherwise, you’re reclaiming a large tract only to get back to where you are now, which is 440 hectares (NAIA land area) which is narrow.”
Roxas said the 440-hectare NAIA has already proven to be too small to allow two parallel and independent runways.
“The long-term alternative is still Clark where we have 2,000 hectares, quite wide, and we have up to three parallel independent runways,” he said.
Roxas said Clark has vast land ready for development and does not needs a huge reclamation project.
However, making Clark airport as the main gateway requires a fast rail access to Metro Manila, he added.
Roxas said the 440-hectare NAIA with two but intersecting runways was heavily congested.
“We have a runway congestion problem today, we all got here collectively,” he said.
“We barely noticed the growing runway traffic with the higher aircraft population and flight schedules after so many years.”
Roxas said NAIA’s runways can only accommodate an average of 36 takeoffs and landings per hour, but that actual scheduled commercial and general aviation flights, including fish runs, went to as high as 50 per hour during daytime this summer passenger season.