The common perception that facility limitations on Northern Mindanao’s premier airport are a constraint to the region’s development has been debunked by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines highest ranking regional officer.
Tigerair Phils is the first plane from Manila to make commercial night flight to Laguindingan. (Photo by Rich Neri Concepcion)
While admitting that Laguindingan Airport’s passenger terminal building already exceeded its design capacity of 1.6 million people annually four years ago, Jose G. Budiongan, airport/area manager for CAAP Area X said the airport still has available slots during other times of the day to accommodate further flights.
“Every day from 12MN to 5AM we have no flights so we can accommodate about 3 flights an hour or 15 additional daily flights for this particular period,” Budiongan said. “We also have only one flight from 8-11AMdaily and we can accommodate another 3 flights during this time.”
Even with the airport’s existing 2,100 meter long runway, Budiongan said it has already been comfortably servicing Philippine Airlines A321-231 aircraft which can accommodate 199 passengers in 3 classes (business, premium economy & economy) each flight.
The even newer A321neo now in service with some Asian airlines can accommodate up to 240 passengers and travel up to 6,850 kms. with sharklets, greatly increasing the radius of tourist/passenger markets which can be serviced by Laguindingan Airport.
KIA : Template for Successful Regional Airport Development
Budiongan cites the experience of Kalibo International Airport (KIA) in Aklan as an example of how an airport with facility constraints can maximize its potential.
With even more limited facilities such as a small passenger terminal building and 1,300 meter runway, KIA was already the fastest growing airport in the Philippines with 50% passenger volume growth in 2010 and the second fastest growing in terms of seat capacity by June 2014 over the previous year (+20%).
That’s because it has even more foreign flights than domestic, being ranked the third busiest in the Philippines behind only Manila and Cebu and 4th overall in terms of total domestic and total domestic/foreign flights.
KIA has been made a regional operations hub of PAL, Cebu Pacific, AirAsia Philippines and PAL Express. In addition to its domestic flights, PAL also operates regular flights from Busan, charter flights from Guangzhou, and seasonal charters to Khabvorousk while PAL Express operates charter flights to Shanghai and Pudong. AirAsia Philippines operates regular scheduled flights from Seoul and Busan.
It operates regular and charter flights by foreign carriers to Asian destinations such as China Airlines (Taipei, Taoyuan), Silkair (Singapore), Tigerair (Singapore), XiamenAir (Fuzhou, Xiamen), ANA (Seoul-Inchon, Busan). Foreign carriers also service domestic connecting flights from Cebu ( SilkAir & Singapore Airlines ) and Manila (Etihad Airways)
This year, it welcomed new flights from Hong Kong Express and Pan Pacific Airline.
A runway extension project started in 2015 has extended the KIA’s runway to 2,300 meters to comply with international standards, part of a long term P6-billion airport development project. As of 2016, Aklan’s 1.9 million annual passenger traffic, P53-billion revenues and 15,142 flights makes it the top ranked airport in Region VI per Dept of Region statistics.
The Potential for More Passengers
Budiongan expects Laguindingan Airport to exceed the 1.9 million passenger threshold by this year’s end. A Gate 3 is in the works to accommodate Business Class passengers of PAL and moving the Duty Free Shop beside Gate 1 can open up space for an additional 100 passengers.
Tigerair Phils flight from Manila becomes first plane to make night flght from Manila to LAX. (Photo by Rich Neri Concepcion)
He cites how with basically the same runway facilities and passenger terminal building constraints, KIA was already able to attain that volume servicing basically the same A320 and A320 aircraft, albeit mostly coming from abroad.
“Even the Instrument Landing System (ILS) which we lobbied so hard for in the past is now only used as our back up system since domestic airliners are already using the newer and more efficient Performance Based Navigation (PBN) system since 2015 when the airport was certified for Required Navigation Performance (RPN) systems,” Budiongan said.
“With these present facilities servicing the same types of aircraft already deployed on present routes, we can attain a significant increase in passenger volume of up to an additional million passengers even on a 50 percent load factor if the available 18 slots for additional flights are taken up by regularly scheduled and charter flights by domestic and foreign airlines, especially from China and Russia,” he added.
Globally Known Destinations
However, Budiongan stressed that the success of KIA is mostly due to the attraction of its tourist destination, most notably Boracay, which is accessible by van and ferry through Caticlan, not all the tourists and visitors going through KIA proceed to Boracay.
“It’s equally important we make our flagship destinations better known in social media and at par with foreign destinations in Asia,” he said. “The region has excellent upland developments and beach resorts which can be easily accessed through Laguindingan Airport and emerging big ticket destinations such as the Seven Seas Waterpark and Resort would endear our region even more to domestic and even regional tourists looking out for sand, surf and sun.”
It’s only when existing and emerging tourist destinations, packaged by domestic and foreign tour operators, gain parity in the social media and the highly competitive digital tourism market, that foreign airlines would consider Laguindingan worthy of the passenger traffic it can generate for their business.
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