THE battle for NAIA continues. It’s been reported lately that a consortium of the biggest businesses is offering a few billion pesos to own and operate the NAIA complex, Manila’s air travel gateway to the world and a favorite in the list of the world’s worst.
I don’t remember the exact figure but it was in the billions. Then again, the property itself is worth that much and maybe more, right smack as it is in a very commercial area of Metro Manila. If it were to be converted into a mixed-use property, the developer will be able to take in billions over billions. News reports used the number P100 billion as the value of the proposal and spoke of a large upfront payment to the government but what that large sum was, I didn’t get to see.
The biggest problem of NAIA is not that the terminals are not at par with the world or are not connected. It’s that we only have one runway really, which means that arrivals and departures will have to be scheduled in such a way that the single runway is used to the max. In contrast, the best airports around the region — which are some of the best in the world — have at least two runways. So, arrivals and departures can continue unimpeded by issues in either of the two.
‘… that’s a minor one compared to the issues caused by flights having to back up due to traffic congestion on the single runway.’
The proposal of MIAC (I think that’s the name of the consortium) is said to speak of a vast improvement in the terminals, including their connectivity, a current problem. That will be good because our food terminals are an embarrassment when it comes to travelers who need to move from one carrier to another and operate on different terminals.
But as I have said that’s a minor one compared to the issues caused by flights having to back up due to traffic congestion on the single runway.
So, what we need to see is how the conglomerate plans to have a second runway way before anything else.
To paraphrase the winning Clinton campaign slogan, “It’s the runway, stupid.”
