… building and expanding airports must be in response to increasing tourist arrivals.
The Philippines will soon have four international airports along a stretch or an arc of about 135 kilometers. That will establish the country with one of the densest airport infrastructure facilities in the world.
There is nothing wrong with having several airports that are in proximity with each other. Former Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III back in 2018 noted that most megalopolises around the world were being served by multiple airports.
Does the Cavite-Metro Manila-Bulacan-Pampanga corridor, however, have the tourism numbers to justify the existence of four international airports?
Clark International Airport in Mabalacat, Pampanga in the north is a mere 125 km away from the proposed Sangley Point International Airport (SPIA) in Cavite province in the south. Between them are Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Parañaque City and Pasay City, and the controversial Bulacan International Airport in Bulacan province.
Having multiple airports is not an anomaly, per se. Visitors’ traffic back them up.
Five airports serve Paris, France. The nearest airport to Paris is Paris Orly (ORY) Airport, which is 14.3 km away from the land of Eiffel Tower. Other nearby airports serving Paris are main airport Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG), which is 22.9 km from the capital city, and Beauvais (BVA), located 69.2 km away. Lille Lesquin (LIL) is 198.3 km away.
About 50 million tourists travel to Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region each year, with 47.5 million visits recorded in 2023. In 2019, 50.6 million people visited Paris and the Île-de-France region.
Italy’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, better known as Fiumicino (FCO), is Rome’s main airport, the gateway to Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican.
Ciampino Airport (CIA) is Rome’s secondary airport. It is smaller than the FCO airport but an efficient gateway. FCO and CIA are 24 km apart but they served over 35 million tourists who visited Rome in 2023.
Here in the Philippines, it’s up to the private sector proponents of the four airports to make their operations viable and efficient.
Clark appears to be making a niche as an alternative airport to Manila. It has become the preferred gateway of regional budget airlines as passengers take just an hour of travel time to reach Metro Manila and less, if they live in Pampanga, Tarlac or Bulacan provinces.
I am not sure how the other three airports will fare in the future. Antiquated NAIA is being modernized to be at par with more efficient regional airports while the efficiency of the Bulacan airport remains to be seen.
A fourth airport, meanwhile, is set to rise. The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) approved just Monday the proposed joint venture between the Cavite provincial government and the consortium of Cavitex Holdings Inc. and House of Investments Inc. to develop the $11-billion Sangley Airport.
The anti-trust body says the proposed transaction involving a public-private partnership (PPP) project “is unlikely to result in a substantial lessening, restriction or prevention of competition in the relevant market.”
The joint venture partners offered to develop, own, operate, manage and maintain the SPIA in Cavite City, which is intended to alleviate congestion at the NAIA.
Proponent SPIA Development Corp., which is composed of Cavitex Holdings, Yuchengco Group, MacroAsia Corp. and their foreign partners, earlier said the airport project included the construction of a four-kilometer connector road, with provisions for rail connectivity, fully-integrated logistics and aviation support facilities. With the development of the first runway, SPIA can operate as a satellite runway to immediately relieve the extreme congestion of the runway at NAIA.
But building and expanding airports must be in response to increasing tourist arrivals. The Philippines, or Metro Manila and its peripheral provinces, does not have the inviting numbers to justify airport expansions yet.
The Department of Tourism expects at least 7.7 million foreign tourists to visit the whole Philippines in 2024, higher than the 2023 target of 4.8 million. These are minuscule numbers compared with those arriving at the multiple airports of Paris and Rome.
Philippine airports must also manage or find a way to deal with the attendant traffic congestion that they will create if their economic assumptions add up.
E-mail: rayenano@yahoo.com or extrastory2000@gmail.com
