Planning Backwards

Could Be A World Class Solution?

6 February 2015

In a possible policy shift, the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority (CAAP) has joined Transport Department (DOTC) proposals to axe the parallel runway project at Ninoy Aquino International Airport and build instead a new Terminal 5 building from where the runway is supposed to be built.

At least that is how (CAAP) Deputy Director General for Operations Rodante Joya wanted his way as he told lawmakers who inspected the NAIA facilities Thursday.

Joya said that building another terminal is faster and less expensive compared to building another runway to accommodate more flights.

Of course he did not tell the Congressmen that building the new Terminal 5 will not alleviate runway traffic. Instead Joya said that it is cheaper to build.

In an unprecedented move, the CAA has now ventured into the realms of airport and runway financing where it has no power or authority to say or do, other than following aviation regulations.

Runway congestion is different from terminal congestion. The former is defined by Air Traffic Movements (ATM) while the latter involves passenger traffic inside terminal building. They are never and will never be the same.

DOTC has been mulling the construction of NAIA Terminal 5 but President Benigno Aquino shut down the idea as Manila airport's problem is associated with aircraft movements and not passenger traffic. The President instead wanted DOTC to plan Terminal 2 and 3 expansion other than building another terminal.

The Agency however has devious plan to have its way by hiring an airport consultant that do its bidding and then say we are merely following the recommendations of the Dutch airport consultants that we hired, even if such plan is fatally flawed.

At least the airport operator is brutally honest about it.

Manila International Airport Authority(MIAA) Manager Jose Angel Honrado said that NAIA’s capacity to accommodate more flights is restricted by its limited runway. No matter how many terminals are built it will still suffer the same runway restriction with the four terminals.

And so it begs the question, "what good is a spanking new terminal would do to you when you spend hours inside your plane waiting for its queue or clearance to depart or land in the precious runway?"

The answer happens to be so simple even the school kids can figure, common sense, that is building a new runway. Even London Heahtrow is attempting to do so while Hong Kong is on its way to building their third runway because of runway congestion. But that sense could not be so common here as Philippine planners has a different solutions in mind to the same problem. It could be a world class idea.