“While the Constitution permits private sector participation in public utilities, it does not sanction the surrender of the State’s duty to regulate in the public interest”
UP FOR decision by the Supreme Court is a case that looks at first glance as a mere dispute over higher airport charges, but here we have a fundamental question on the Constitutional limits of privatization in the delivery of essential public services.
At its core, the controversy surrounding the Ninoy Aquino International Airport fee hike compels judicial scrutiny not only of economic policy choices, but of the constitutional principles that govern how far the State may go in transferring public functions to private hands without eroding accountability, equity, and public trust.
PUSO ng NAIA, a collective of airport employees and workers, frames the controversy not as resistance to modernization or rehabilitation per se, but as principled opposition to the transformation of the country’s primary international gateway into a predominantly fee-driven facility.
Petitioners emphasize that they do not reject infrastructure improvement; rather, they question a model of rehabilitation that relies heavily on imposing higher compulsory charges on the very public the airport is meant to serve. In their view, privatization becomes constitutionally suspect when it effectively converts access to a public utility into a privilege increasingly conditioned on one’s ability to pay.
The rehabilitation of NAIA is thus portrayed as a framework that shifts the financial burden of upgrading infrastructure directly onto passengers and airport workers, instead of the State absorbing or equitably distributing the costs of modernization.
The magnitude of the increases reinforces the gravity of the issue.
Domestic terminal fees are reported to have risen from ₱200 to as much as ₱390, while international terminal fees allegedly climbed from around ₱550 to as high as ₱950.
These figures cannot be dismissed as marginal regulatory adjustments or routine inflationary corrections.
Such increases are said to impose abrupt cost shocks on a captive market, disproportionately affecting ordinary travelers, overseas Filipino workers, and budget passengers who lack meaningful alternatives. For many OFWs, air travel is not a discretionary luxury but an economic necessity tied to livelihood and family survival.
The Court is called upon to examine petitions assailing both the legality of the fee hikes and the concession framework that enabled them.
Serious questions have been raised regarding due process and lawful delegation of authority.
Petitioners contend that the fee increases were implemented without sufficient transparency or genuine public participation, with affected sectors informed only after decisions had been finalized. Such a process, they argue, reduces consultation to a mere formality rather than a meaningful safeguard.
Procedural due process, long recognized in Philippine jurisprudence, requires more than notice in form; it demands a real opportunity to be heard before financial burdens of nationwide consequence are imposed.
Public consultation, the Court has consistently held, must be substantive and meaningful, not perfunctory or ceremonial.
A second issue of Constitutional weight concerns the delegation of regulatory power, particularly rate-setting authority that carries direct economic impact.
If a concession agreement effectively allows a private operator to determine airport fees with minimal governmental restraint, the arrangement may amount to an abdication of regulatory responsibility.
While the Constitution permits private sector participation in public utilities, it does not sanction the surrender of the State’s duty to regulate in the public interest.
The Court has previously ruled that private participation may enhance efficiency, but it cannot displace Constitutional control nor override the State’s obligation to protect consumers from unreasonable charges.
Arguments that judicial intervention may discourage investment cannot prevail where legality itself is in question, for development must operate within constitutional bounds, not outside them.
Investment, no matter how desirable, cannot justify arrangements that erode constitutional safeguards.
Given the immediate and continuing financial burden imposed on millions of Filipinos, petitioners argue that each day the higher fees are collected, the harm becomes increasingly difficult to undo.
In this context, the issuance of a temporary restraining order by the Supreme Court would serve not to hinder development, but to preserve constitutional equilibrium while the Court determines whether contractual arrangements must yield to citizens when fundamental rights and public interest are at stake. (Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)
