BAGUIO CITY – Baguio City is up in arms battling the planned Loakan Airport’s closure.
This even as President Arroyo, who used the airport again during her brief visit in the Pines City on Wednesday, seemed is hard bent on ordering a closure to the more than 70-year-old airport that is now seldom used by commercial airlines.
Baguio political and tourism business leaders and stakeholders in a rather rare show of unity are sounding grim and determined in opposing the closure because “the airport means a lot to tourism, business and sentimentalism included,” they said.
“Its closure will irreparably set back the tourist potential of Baguio,” said Anthony de Leon, chief of the Baguio Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and manager of the posh Baguio Country Club. De Leon and other tourism stakeholders joining hands with other business leaders here have earlier petitioned the President to reconsider closing the 4.3 km. airport built at the former grasslands in Barangay Loakan in 1932, “because it is an important infrastructure for Baguio and the rest of the Cordillera region.” The citizens of Baguio has a lot of stakes in the closure of the airport, he added.
Short of saying they are on the “war path,” Baguio Rep. Mauricio Domogan, a staunch GMA political ally, said in native Iluko in jest: Intay makigubaten a nu kasapulan” (lets go to war if needed).
Domogan vowed political pressure as he plans to enlist all the five Cordillera congressmen in a pressure play with Malacañang on the Loakan issue as he encouraged Baguio residents to do the same just to save the Loakan Airport. The city council and the city leadership should also create pressure to Malacañang, Domogan said.
The upgrading of the international airport in Poro Point, La Union has prompted the national government to instead close Loakan Airport, reliable sources said.
The Philippine Export Zone Authority (PEZA) has also offered US-based microchip manufacturing firm Texas Instrument an expansion area towards the airport.
But highly strung Domogan said, “instead of the Loakan Airport area, why should PEZA not offer the abandoned mine sites of the Benguet Corporation in nearby Itogon town, in Benguet for TI’s purposes.”
Aside from these, De Leon admitted that the seldom use of domestic commercial airlines of the airport is a huge factor why the national government is bent to think of its closure. “But why not think of rehabilitation and upgrading instead,” he said.
Even Air Transport Office officials have admitted that aside from the short airstrip of the Loakan Airport, security risks are built in it because not only that the airport is accessed by air traffic, but more often than not human and land vehicular traffic because there are hundreds of Ibaloi (native Benguets) and other residents living across the airport.
But Domogan was quick, “why won’t we solve the security problems like the access road!”
Short of launching on Friday noon a city-wide and maybe Cordillera-wide campaign to save the Loakan Airport, leaders here vow to block the airport’s closure even if it may involve going to Malacañang.
