MIAA meets with Japanese contractor on NAIA-3

Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) technical consultants and representatives of the Japanese construction firm that built the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA-3) will hold a dialogue next week to discuss the facility’s "structural defects."

Both camps are expected to argue on who should repair the $650-million building that Takenaka Corp. erected in 2002 as the general contractor hired by the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (PIATCO) consortium.  

Last month, MIAA general manager Alfonso Cusi cancelled the scheduled opening of NAIA-3 after two engineering firms found structural problems that need to be corrected before the facility can be made operational.

In an interview with The STAR, he said the April 30 meeting will be the first face-to-face discussion with Takenaka since the latter denied responsibility for the defects.

"They gave us a window from April 30 to May 4 when their people would be available so we scheduled the meeting on April 30, the soonest possible time," Cusi said.

According to him, MIAA sent another letter reiterating that Takenaka should be the one to repair the facility since it is still under warranty.

Cusi’s first letter earned an unfavorable response from the construction company, who also asked for a meeting with MIAA’s engineers and technical team so they could further explain.

NAIA-3, a modern airport terminal that occupies 189,000 square meters of land area with an estimated capacity of 13 million passengers per year, has been sitting useless for almost five years now.

With 28 airbridges that can service 28 aircrafts all at once, a four-level shopping mall that connects the terminal and parking buildings, a parking building with a capacity of 2,000 vehicles, an outdoor parking area with a 1,200-vehicle capacity, and with the capability of servicing 33,000 passengers daily at peak or 6,000 passengers per hour, the NAIA-3 was supposed to be the pride of NAIA.

It also has 70 flight information terminals, 314 display monitors with 300 kilometers of fiber optics cabling, 29 restroom blocks, five departure area all equipped with X-ray machines.

But the results of pre-opening inspections by TCGI Engineers Inc. and the Ove Arup & Partners HK Ltd. showed that NAIA-3, as constructed, did not fully complied with the original design intent developed by the structural designer and that there are violations of code requirements on life safety issues, specifically on the capacity of the facility to prevent structural collapse and loss of lives in the event of a major earthquake.

The firms said remediation works need to be undertaken on a number of beams, girders and post-tension slabs, as well as columns and piles while the foundations of the vehicular access ramp were also declared unstable with the deck slab and columns requiring remediation.