Villarete: Mactan airport now experiencing “natural growth”

CEBU, Philippines - The Mactan-Cebu International Airport, the country’s second busiest airport, will continue to see sustained growth in terms of number of flights and passenger traffic, an official said.

MCIA Authority General Manager Nigel Paul Villarete said the airport has experienced a “natural growth” with the addition of more flights coming in and out of Mactan.

Villarete cited several contributing factors to the growth.

“Now it’s really because of the good performance of the aviation industry in the Philippines. It’s also because of the attraction of Cebu as a destination and other several things like the improved connectivity,” Villarete told The FREEMAN in a phone interview yesterday.

Latest data from MCIAA showed that flights, both domestic and international, coming in and out of Mactan airport grew by 9% from January to September 2015 to 46,936 from 43,017 in the same period last year.

Passenger traffic during the nine-month period also rose by 13% to 5.8 million from 5.2 million in last year’s comparable period.

While cargo also increased by 57% to 68.2 million kilograms in the first nine months of 2015 from 43.3 million kilograms last year.

APEC AND IEC

Villarete said the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings held in Cebu in August to October this year had also contributed to some extent to the increase in flights and passengers.

The upcoming International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) to be held in Cebu in January next year will also bring in more visitors, Villarete said, adding that more delegates are seen during IEC than APEC.

“We are looking at passenger and flight movements [for the upcoming IEC] and so we will react accordingly,” the general manager said.

The IEC, to be held from January 24 to 31, is expected to draw 15,000 pilgrims from all over the world in Cebu, the country’s birthplace of Christianity.

Moving forward, Villarete is looking at a 10-12% growth rate for the last quarter of the year in terms of aircraft and passenger traffic.  Growth has also been attributed to the major changes happening at MCIA.

“We can also attribute a lot to the development of the airport itself especially with the PPP (public-private partnership) of the terminal 2 construction already starting and with the prospect even of higher growth rate in the future,” the airport official explained.

In April 2014, GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corp. (GMCAC), a Filipino firm formed from the consortium between listed Megawide Construction Corp. and Bangalore-based GMR Infrastructure Ltd., won the P17.5-billion concession to rehabilitate and manage MCIA for 25 years, including the construction of a second terminal for international passengers.

GMCAC took over starting November last year the terminal operations at the Mactan airport.

The new terminal, targeted to be completed by 2018, is seen to increase the capacity of MCIA to 12.5 million passengers a year from the current 4.5 million.

The concession agreement also requires GMCAC to renovate the existing decades-old terminal building through progressive facelift works.

The MCIA modernization project is the Aquino administration’s first airport PPP project.

In the July 31 interview, Villarete had announced the approval of the MCIAA Board for the construction of a second runway. It will become a requirement for the airport’s capacity expansion between 2020-2030.

He had said the planned new runway, which may begin construction by 2018, is also an answer to the annual passenger traffic growth. (FREEMAN)