The Plan of the Philippine Government to "Modernize" Manila International Airport Terminal 1
Posted on Friday, 9 October 2015
The
Plan of the Philippine Government
To
“Modernize” Manila International Airport Terminal 1
By Apolinario Villalobos
Hearing again the “plan” of the national
government to modernize the international airport 1, raises eyebrows of
Manilans and frequent travelers to the overrated city. Only one big question
can be asked: how can that be possible with a boxed-in space?
Perhaps, because of the ongoing
construction of flyovers directly to the international airport terminal 1 from
the City of Dreams and elsewhere, that, for the national government is already
“modernization”. The flyovers will definitely just provide short-ranged relief
from traffic because connections to those flyovers such as Taft Avenue, Roxas
Boulevard, MIA Road, and EDSA are still bottlenecks, not to mention the Sucat
Road in Paraἧaque.
By modernization of the international
airport facilities, it should mean, that the whole building and its
peripheries… the tarmacs and runways, as well as, other facilities operated by
concessionaires are included. The simple makeover that was haphazardly done to
the Terminal 1 is definitely, not a modernization. The government’s
spokespersons are making a fool of Filipinos who, they thought are dumb.
The seemingly infinite problem of the
aviation industry in Manila is the traffic of the incoming and outgoing flights
due to the limited runway. Morning and early afternoon flights are the most
affected as taxiing out aircrafts have to wait until incoming flights have
safely taxied in, resulting to delays that take as long as six hours. The
domino effect of delays is just incredible! For instance, the last flight from
Davao that is supposed to arrive in Manila before 10PM, most often arrives at
past midnight!
On the other hand, the decaying terminal 1
is until now, on its refurbishing stage. The makeover cannot hide the fact that
the toilets are not consistently spick and span, the aircon units’ performance
is still far from satisfactory, the taxi service is still miserable.
As with terminal 1, the rest of the
terminals are boxed-in, too, with no space for further expansion. The three
terminals are sharing the same runways, so that all of them are practically
affected by the traffic of aircrafts.
The national government should stop talking
about “modernizing” the airport terminals in Manila, especially, if it is
insinuating more projects for this, because those in the know will definitely
suspect that another round of corruption is in the making due to contracts
involved. In the first place, such promise is no longer viewed as realistic.
Let me mention here, the toilets of all the
airport terminals which are not cleaned consistently, with their malfunctioning
urinals and faucets of lavatories, defective flush mechanism of toilet bowls, and
the unkempt “gardens”. What is disgusting is the absence of a downward
escalator for the nearby terminal 2, only just a slow and aged upward
escalator. The elevator can accommodate only 4 or 5 passengers. And yet, the
government keeps on talking about “modernization” of the airport!
What Manila needs is another international
airport somewhere else, and the area where it is located should be the
“progressive type”, expansive, with reserved portions for future developments.
If the transfer of airport terminal to a better location was made possible for
Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, General Santos, and much earlier, for Davao, why can’t
it be done for Manila that has more options?
Again, the national government should stop
talking about this issue, as its objective is very obvious- to show that the
outgoing Pnoy is doing his best as President of the Philippines, while his
administration is projecting the country’s image as making leaps and bounds due
to economic progress under his term….a doubtful allegation. As skeptics always
say about his administration: tell that to the Marines!
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