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| Budget air terminal eyed |
| Friday, 16 May 2008 12:58 | |||
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Airport officials announced on Thursday plans to construct a “budget terminal” in the third quarter of 2008 to ease the crowding at Manila Domestic Airport (MDA) in Pasay City. Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) General Manager Alfonso Cusi told reporters work on the new terminal, to cost P200 million, would start in August or September and be completed in March 2009. “This is because we project an increase in air travel. More people now travel by air because of airline fare promos, new routes and similar developments,” Cusi said. “Instead of us reacting, we will have the infrastructure ready before that happens,” he added. Cusi said domestic passenger traffic increased 12 percent in the last three years, noting that three million passengers passed through the MDA in 2007. NAIA-3, built in 2002 also in anticipation of a rise in international air travel, has yet to be opened even though it was 98-percent complete. Charges of anomalies in its construction and quarrels among its builders and contractors have tied up the terminal in litigation and delayed its opening for four years now. Cusi begged off from giving a new opening date for NAIA-3, but said repair and completion work to get the facility in shape continued. The new domestic terminal, expected to host the budget airlines that use smaller planes for local flights, will accommodate 1,000 departing passengers at one time. The facility will rise on the former site of an aeronautics school on Domestic Road, near the MDA. Upon the request of airlines, the terminal would have no passenger tubes as the airlines would like to ferry their passengers from terminal to plane and vice versa on coaches, a mode that was “faster and more cost efficient,” Cusi said. The budget terminal is the next phase in the MIAA’s expansion plan for the MDA, which hosts most of the domestic airlines flying out of Manila. Philippine Airlines and sister companies Air Philippines and PAL Express use the Centennial Terminal or NAIA-1 for both international and domestic flights. At present, the MIAA is constructing a new arrival wing at the MDA, while the old arrival area will be turned into an extension of the pre-departure area. The new pre-departure area would accommodate 1,200 passengers at once, up from the current 900, Cusi said. This would mean a total of 2,200 departing passengers and the same number of arrivals could be comfortably accommodated in both terminals at one time, he added. The MIAA is also overseeing repairs and completion work at NAIA-3 at a cost of P800 million, or four times the projected cost of the new domestic terminal.
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