We hear PNoy is visiting Cagayan de Oro this Tuesday, June 11th as part of the “soft opening” for the Laguindingan Airport scheduled to start operations on Saturday, June 15.
We hope the President has time and the inclination to lend an ear to his “bosses”, since his underlings at the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) seem hell-bent in opening the new facility at any cost, including the lives and livelihood of people from Northern Mindanao, and never mind the recent mishap of Cebu Pacific at Davao airport which was lucky to escape with no fatalities to crew and passengers, but nevertheless cost the Davao economy an estimated P250-million in foregone revenues.
President Noynoy Aquino during a recent inspection of the Laguindingan Airport with Cagayan de Oro Mayor-Elect Oscar Moreno (photo courtesy of Rolando Mailo, Malacañang Photo Bureau)
The “conservative estimate” of the Davao City Investment Promotion Office and the Davao City Chamber of Commerce of the losses caused by the Cebu Pacific crash covering the night of the crash, June 2 to June 4 when flights resumed, includes P3 million for cancelled hotel bookings, P500,000 for airport concessionaires, P1.5 million for transport service providers (vans, cabs, tourist buses, and car rentals), P50 million for other allied industries, P2 million for Airport terminal revenues and P190 million for Cargo.
If Davao’s economy could lose that much in the span of two and a half days, imagine the damage to the Northern Mindanao economy with the loss of at least 15 daily flights from July 1st, 2013 up to March 2014 as confirmed by no less than the CAAP Area IX Director in an article in another local daily under Laguindingan airport’s Visual Flight Rules (VFR) regime.
That’s nine months of lost flights compared to the day and half losses of Davao following the recent crash. Not panicking yet?
In a letter to PNoy dated June 3, 2013, Oro Chamber President Efren T. Uy again reiterated the business sector’s fears about the impact to the region’s economy posed by the cancelled flights and risk to passenger safety posed by the new facility’s VFR protocol, suggesting instead the Philippine Air Force’s 15th Strike Wing now based in Sangley Point, Cavite instead use Laguindingan in the meantime.
Apparently, even domestic air carriers now operating in Lumbia airport don’t’ share DOTC and CAAP’s confidence in operating out of the new and “safer” facility.
According to a post in the PhilippineFlightNetwork.blog (URL: http://www.ch-aviation.
have all “expressed their displeasure at the Philippine Department of Transportation and Communications’ decision to forge ahead with the June 15 opening of the new USD190million Laguindingan International Airport, set to replace the smaller Cagayan de Oro Lumbia (CGY) airport as the gateway to the northern Mindanao and Misamis Oriental provinces.”
Although the airlines convinced the government to push back the original April 30 opening date “to minimize disruption to passengers and to permit more time to rearrange flight schedules”, the 45 day postponement has apparently failed to convince all carriers the airport and its support infrastructure is ready to receive flights by the planned 30 June opening date.
The reported lack of available power needed to properly operate Laguindingan’s facilities remains another issue. In fact, word has it even local CAAP officials are not comfortable with the revised opening date.
So where does that leave the people of Northern Mindanao by June 15? In the interest of the greater national good (being those of our overlords in the National Capital Region) we are once again disposable “collateral damage”.
No wonder the PNoy magic doesn’t work in Mindanao: he has consistently demonstrated an obstinacy that many like to call “spite” for coming in second to a deposed and convicted former president who is now mayor of Manila.
Only in the Philippines.
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