The Bureau of Immigration (BI) is set to deploy some of its personnel at the new international airports in Kalibo and Caticlan in Aklan where several flights bound for and from Taiwan will be opened this coming weeks.
BI commissioner Norman Tansingco has already instructed the bureau’s port operations division (POD) to ensure that adequate personnel are deployed to the two airports to address the increased volume of passengers resulting from the new flights.
Tansingco said that the inaugural flight from Caticlan to Taipei by Royal Air is scheduled on Dec. 13.
“It will also mark the first time BI will launch its operations at the new Caticlan airport,” he added.
Meanwhile, the BI chief said Tiger Air will be launching its Kalibo-Taipei-Kalibo flights on Dec. 29. Initially, Tiger Air plans to mount four flights to Taipei every week.
Tansingco said the BI anticipates a continuing increase in international passenger volume in all of the international ports next year when a further easing in Covid-19 travel restrictions is expected.
BI-POD acting chief Carlos Capulong said that passenger arrivals in the different airports are now averaging at between 25,000 to 27,000 a day in the past several days.
Capulong said the statistics are a far cry from the daily average of 5,000 passenger arrivals when the country re-opened its borders to foreign tourists in March last year.