Why MNL Traffic Decongestion Remedy Wont Work?

Airport Transfer Statistics
6 January 2016

72% of NAIA passengers has Metro Manila as destination while only 28.4% fly somewhere else. Most travellers connect to Puerto Princesa (PPS). This is the reason why the government is fast tracking construction of new Puerto Princesa Airport Passenger Terminal Building to absorb the 4.7% transfer traffic out of NAIA's 38 million passengers in 2016. Philippine Airlines already has regular charters to Taiwan and South Korea from PPS with Air Asia following suit in 2017. Domestic Transfer from Cebu is even larger at 5.2% which explains Cebu Pacific's massive growth on this route in 2016. Connection traffic to Caticlan was seen to go down dramatically in 2016 because of Kalibo gateway and Bacolod opening up for international traffic.

Airport planners see PPS to be the 3rd biggest airport in the Philippines if trends continue within the next 10 years driven by international passenger traffic, overtaking Davao, Iloilo and Kalibo in the process. Kalibo will likewise suffer a drastic reduction of passengers when Caticlan's new PTB opens in 2018. It is seen that 100% of Kalibo's international traffic will also relocate should the government allow Caticlan to be a gateway airport. Currently, only Kalibo and Iloilo in Panay are made gateway airports under ASEAN and North Asean bilateral agreements. Puerto Princesa and Caticlan will soon be connected with other domestic airports other than Manila, Cebu and Clark which should see passenger traffic mitigation working until at least 2022.