I was supposed to fly in Friday night. But some newbie pilot from Fujian’s Xiamen Airlines skidded into the grass Thursday and fouled up the entire Naia.
I was rebooked on the afternoon flight for Manila Saturday, scheduled to leave at four, and supposed to arrive at 6:30 that evening of Aug. 18.
Up until almost noontime of Saturday, I watched the TFC news which finally confirmed that the airport would re-open by noon. Earlier that morning, the hapless Xiamen Airplane was towed away.
I heaved a sigh of relief, and by 1 pm, I was on the way to the Taoyuan airport. I checked in at 1:45, done by 1:50, and cleared immigration by 2 pm. The plane was scheduled to leave at 4:05, later adjusted to 4:15. Everything seemed normal.
It was about five minutes before five that afternoon that we took off. The plane was quite full, with so many seniors and differently-abled people on wheelchairs, and so many young infants with their parents, many of whom were bumped off from their Friday flight as well.
We expected to make Naia at 6:45 that evening, and after the airline meal at about 5:30, I fell asleep. I looked at my watch when I woke up, and it was already 7:30. I peeped at the window and noticed that we were encircling the Bulacan-Bataan air corridor.
The pilot announced that he was not yet allowed to land at Naia because the “traffic” was bad. We just continued going round and round the air corridor. It was already half-past eight that night. I could see other planes with their blinking taillights going round and round and thought this was what one of my favorite songs warble as “round…like a circle in a spiral…running rings around…” except it wasn’t funny anymore.
I even wondered, what if somehow the pilots of these planes made the wrong calculations, and the “circles in a spiral” collided with each other? Oh no, it won’t happen…but then again, what if one of these planes was a Xiamen, or a China Southern? Perish the thought.
Then the pilot announced that the plane was running low on fuel, and he had to land at Clark, refuel, and wait there for instructions that there was space for our plane at the Naia terminal had. It was 9:05 in the evening when we touched down upon the Clark runway.
I called up Manila and told the driver waiting for me at the airport to go home and just await further instructions.
Then the minutes and the hours passed away, as did the passengers’ patience which began to wear thin. The babies were crying; some men demanded that we be allowed to disembark in Pampanga. “And the days [hours] dwindled down, to a precious few…September…” I consoled myself while listening to the playlist I had compiled earlier on the music track.
Except this was August yet, then I realized that the ghost month began last August 11, and would end by September 9.
Ahhh…the things your mind plays with in times of stress… ‘‘when the saints [ghosts] go marchin’ in,” Louis Armstrong on the playlist I should have included.
Then the pilot made an announcement in his Sinitic English: “The situation in Manila is hopeless; it does not look like we can land there anytime; all the parking slots are still occupied. We will fly back to Taoyuan airport.”
Bedlam ensued. “But we are already in the Philippines. We can get out here in Clark…open the doors!” so many demanded in unison.
I asked the purser why we cannot indeed be allowed to disembark at Clark. The answer: “There is no immigration at this airport. No one can be allowed entry.”
Really? I wondered if she was telling the truth.
It was 2:05 in the morning when we finally took off for Taoyuan in Taiwan.
Mercifully, the crew served another hot meal. The last one, an early dinner, was served at 5:30 in the afternoon, minutes after takeoff, when we were all blissfully unaware that nightmare awaited us as we approached the country’s “international” airport(s).
We landed at 4 in the morning, Sunday, the 19th of August. We were cocooned in the plane from 4:15 pm to 4 in the morning, three hours longer than a direct flight from the Middle East to Manila, an hour or so shorter than a direct flight from London to Manila.
Oh, the ghost month; Xiamen Airlines; a spooked Fujian pilot who was blindsided by rain; and a Naia with its complex of subsidiary airfields unable to predict the “apocalypse” of an “airgeddon” compounded several times over.
To cap the exhausting night and day, we were told we had to wait because technically we had not “left’ Taiwan, because we had not “arrived” in the Philippines. A special immigration lane was being set up for us.
They gave us rebooking instructions, and it was not until 4:40 that I ambled into the arrival section, waiting for my sleeping driver to rise at 4:10 that morning, and drive all the way to the Taoyuan Airport, finally arriving to collect me a few minutes before five. It was almost six, with the sun already peeping in the gray clouds when we got home.
This is not written to blame anyone. Nobody expected it could happen. The airport manager, Ed Monreal, and the CAAP tried everything possible to clear the runway fast, but soaked sod and weather and a paucity of equipment slowed down the process.
DoTr’s Secretary Art Tugade apologized, and wearily said that the “incident served as an eye-opener—a reminder for us to take a second look at the processes, procedures, and protocols of concerned agencies, and airlines.”
Indeed, and I sympathize even in my vexation over such a harrowing experience. Thank God this septuagenarian’s body can recover easily enough from such experiences.
But as I write this on a Sunday noon, after a few hours of shut-eye in my Taipei apartment, I realize that the wages of previous government neglect and inaction and the lack of any long-term planning, a vision if you may, is taking its toll, and painfully.
A single runway, with a shorter and perpendicular (can you imagine that?) second. We should have built a bigger and more adequate terminal as early as in the ’80s, but up to now, we have not made any decisions.
A North Rail that would have made Clark a better alternative got mired in corruption issues, and a modern terminal that is just being started now under Duterte, because the previous administration did not prioritize it, all these are shortcomings which compound our misery these days.
Our benighted country—oh, what a country!—has not had any real long-term, no, not even medium-term vision for two generations running, maybe more.