To Discourage Travel During Pandemic
10 October 2021
While travel to the Philippines got a lot easier with the government easing quarantine restrictions effective Monday, 11 October 2021, daily quarantine capacity will still be restricted as it was before. Only quarantine days got shorter.
If you wonder why some LAX flight lands in CEB instead of MNL, and why some DXB, DOH, and RUH flights land in CEB, CRK, SFS and DVO, the reason for that is Quarantine restrictions.
This simply means that if your travelling to the Philippines, you must be either an OFW or a business traveller, and you must stay at quarantine facility for a number of days and RT-PCR taken at your own expense if you are not an OFW.
Because for the whole country, only 3,500 passengers are allowed by Health regulators to enter every day. And about a hundred is allocated for essential travels. The rest are for OFWs and their dependents. This week, Bureau of Immigration handled 2,740 Returning Filipinos and their dependents per day and about 750 Foreign Business travelers, Residents, and Diplomats. No restrictions for going out of the country though.
Considering the allocation for essential travels, there is not much space for other forms of travel, which make traveling to the Philippines expensive. Few seats are available for essential travel. That basically makes a trip 6 times more expensive, as you only have to pay one way fare. Return trip happens to be restricted at this time.
For NAIA, only 2,000 passengers are allowed entry.
Why only 2,000?
Because that is the capacity of quarantine hotels accredited by DOT, DOTR, and DOH.
Not all hotels are accredited, or has applied for accreditation because they cannot accept other guests. Other than being ordered closed by government due to health risk classifications, access to hotel premises is also restricted.
The rest of the 1,500 allowed passengers are distributed in CRK, CEB, SFS, and DVO. There is plan to increase capacity by adding GES as gateway, but that has not been approved yet by IATF.
Out of the 3,500 passengers, PAL flies 40% of these market, while the rest is shared by other international carriers.
PAL got the bulk of the traffic mainly because of bayanihan and repatriation flights. You can easily identify these flights as having number 8 and 9 prefixes, mostly coming from the middle east.
Bulk of these flights are paid by the government through OWWA. Although other carriers are also chartered by OWWA like Qatar and Emirates airlines to bring folks home.
The pandemic restrictions causes PAL to transport few passengers going out of Manila and full flight going back. In reverse, foreign based carriers transport few passengers going to Manila, and almost a full flight going out, like the middle east carriers. Only KLM and THY has managed to be like PAL, possibly due to sea-based workers in Europe. While some, like CPA, lives more by cargo traffic. Thus, explains the cost for expensive transport.
At this time, other than diplomats and those having resident visas, only Filipinos are allowed to enter the country.
You must therefore be any of those mentioned above. And the purpose of your travel is either to return home or do some business. And because its necessary, you have to pay for it, dearly.
You hit the nail on the head.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good way of controlling the arrivals to prevent the spread of COVID.. but from who? PH is ranked the worst by Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-resilience-ranking/
On the contrary, PH should really be looking to open up its borders and get cash flowing in again from foreign arrivals. PH's ASEAN neighbours preparing for revenge travel mainly from UK and Europe when these countries get off their reciprocal red lists.
PH Politicians are too busy flogging their own agenda, living in a box and convincing the whole country to go live with them.
FFS, VFR traffic into PH is dead, there will be an explosion of sad story pandemic films if this continues. Open up PH and spare the world of these sad depressing films
I heavily agree with you, sir. We have to admit that the Philippines is heavily restricted to foreigners except tourists: the low influx of FDI together with economic restrictions and chaotic government system reflected in our poorly written Constitution is to blame. The Philippines doesn't deserve to be left behind from resurgent ASEAN after COVID-19 pandemic: open up to foreign tourists and most importantly, foreign investors (via amending article XII).
DeleteThis restriction of foreigners is a perfect example on why the Philippines was the number one economy in 1940 when it was a territory of the United States. Now it is one of the worst economy in Aaia. Thailand which is now partially closed recently was open to foreign tourist for 10 out of 18 months with a ten or fourteen day quarantine.
ReplyDeleteYou have to learn to make adjustments in this modern economy. Philippine economy was down 9 percent in 2020. It is only up one or two percent this year. But that is comparison to 2020 down year. Tourist are 12% of Philippine economy. Thailand takes in 40 million in 2019. Wake up citizens of the Philippines. Tell your corrupt politicians to allow foreigners with quarantine into the country andcreate more jobs and help the economy.