Airline relocation to Terminal 3 Down to two

Two more airlines to relocate to Terminal 3

Cathay Pacific
The airline is the biggest foreign operating carrier in the Philippines with more than 1.2 million passengers carried in 2008. The airline flies 6 to 7 international flights to Manila and Hongkong daily and utilizing wide bodied aircraft from Boeing 747 and 777 to Airbus 330.


Singapore Airlines.
The biggest Southeast Asian Airline operator has carried close to 600 Thousand passengers in 2008. It operates three daily triple seven service from Singapore.
Korean Airlines, Asiana and Thai Airways are expected to join Terminal 3 before the end of the year at the earliest.

Elaine R. Alanguilan
TWO more airlines are expected to relocate their operations to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 within the year, joining the three carriers already operating at the facility.

Alfonso Cusi, general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority, declined to name the two airlines, but said their system requirements matched that of Terminal 3. The terminal can accommodate 13 million passengers.

Cebu Pacific operates its domestic and international flights from Terminal 3, along with Air Philippines and PAL Express which run domestic flights from the facility.

Terminal 3 has processed 8 million passengers in its first year of operations, leaving capacity of 5 million more passengers.

Cusi said there could even be room for at least one more airline, but only two were accommodated this year to avoid choking the system.

Relocating at least two international carriers to Terminal 3 would ease the load of Terminal 1, which currently hosts some 30 international carriers.

He said that about 50 to 60 percent of the new passenger terminal was operational, excluding the parking and mall areas.

“The other airlines will transfer to Terminal 3 as soon as the baggage handling system, check-in system and flight information details system are online,” said Cusi.

He said the baggage system was still manually operated while the flight information details system was still a stand-alone system.

Meanwhile, Cusi said passenger traffic was growing despite the global economic crisis and the influenza A(H1N1) scare.