Mactan Airport gets its second runway

After a long, long time, I have a piece of good news for our readers when we learned that the consortium of Cebu-based company Duros Development Corp. (DDC) and China Construction First Group won the bid for the construction of the secondary parallel runway of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport with a total project cost of P2.078 billion. We got this piece of news from no less than Rafaelito Barino, chairman of Duros Group of Companies, who made the announcement during the State of Duros Address (Soda) held on Jan. 3 at the Divine Life Institute of Cebu (DLIC) in Yati, Liloan. DDC is the flagship company of the Duros Group of Companies, which started out as a family venture of Lito Barino along with his wife, Fe Mantuhac-Barino and the Mantuhac siblings.

The consortium is registered with the Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board and will operate under the name: Duros Development Corp./China Construction First Group. The project is expected to be completed by 2022 or before the term of President Rodrigo Duterte ends. DDC is the first Filipino contractor based in Cebu to undertake an airport runway project. Actually, Duros Corp. has been doing a lot of road projects in the province of Cebu.

Why is this piece of news very important to me personally? Well, during my 20-year stint as private sector representative of the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA), I started asking the group why couldn’t we have a parallel runway like most American airports? Unfortunately the officials of the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) would simply refuse our request telling us that we don’t need a second runway. The reason I started asking was, whenever a plane gets stuck on the main runway, we had to shut down airport operations. Mind you at that time I made this request, airport congestion was non-existent!

How things have changed since Pres. Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. Back then Pres. Duterte understood that the bureaucrats of Manila running the DOTC just didn’t know any better. Then suddenly air travel became inexpensive and Filipinos went on a tourism binge, here and abroad. This resulted in gross traffic congestion in the runways of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

Last year alone, one temporary solution was to use the Sangley Point runway to solve the traffic congestion. Clark Air Base has also been used to reduce the congestion at the NAIA. Then the Bulacan International Airport was approved and what do airport authorities say about this development? It would ease the traffic congestion at NAIA! When you have an airport Terminal with the size of Bulacan International Airport with four parallel runways one can immediately see that when this airport facility is done, NAIA becomes obsolete!

On the plus side, at least it would take years before the Bulacan International Airport is ready and operational. But certainly this gives the Airport Authorities in NAIA some time to think what would happen 10-years down the road. Meanwhile, at least in Mactan we are finally getting a second runway. Now all I need to know is where exactly are they going to build this second runway? I hope Lito Barino will give us a briefing on this project!

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A better piece of news for 2020 came to me as a text message from Philippine Airlines (PAL) vice-president Harry Inoferio when he wrote, “Bobit we are relaunching our direct Cebu/LAX flights effective first week of May at 3X weekly. Promo rate from Cebu for as low as $570 in economy and $2,720 for Business Class plus applicable taxes.”

It was only three short years ago, when PAL invited me to inaugurate the Cebu/LAX flight, after all, as a columnist, I’ve been asking for this route for many decades. It finally came around March 2016. However months after that Cebu/LAX flight, PAL had to stop this flight due to many issues. For passengers the plane didn’t have a state-of-the-art entertainment system. But with Terminal 2 operating, since June 2018, many people would like to go to the US through the Mactan Cebu International Airport  (MCIA) after all, Terminal 2 has developed a very good relations with passengers.

So this means come first week of May, we welcome the return of the Cebu/LAX flight. Of course for so many Filipinos price is often the reason why they fly… and at the rate of $570… it is a cheap way to go to the US. Mind you, while I’ve been given a free tour of Terminal 2 by Andrew Harrison, it was only last Dec. 29, when I used the terminal to fly to Hong Kong with my family. When we returned to Cebu last Jan. 2, it was only then did I realize that Terminal 2 was a very small International airport when you compare it with Hong Kong International Airport.

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