Stakeholders who depend on the Laguindingan Airport are appalled at the news that the Korean contractor who is installing its landing lights and navigational aids has petitioned the Department of Transportation and Communications for a five month extension which if approved, would mean the urgently needed equipment would be in place by November, 2014 at best.
Delivered materials on site
Urgent doesn’t quite cut it in describing the chaos caused by flight cancellations at the spanking new airport opened with much fanfare by the President himself last June 15, 2013 over the strident opposition of the business sector.
“We cannot allow an extension until November, 2014,” said a former official of the Oro Chamber. “This will further affect our competitiveness and disrupt all planned conventions and conferences in the city. We cannot even count the impact to our visitors who have been inconvenienced by the cancellations; likely, they will shelve future plans of going to Cagayan de Oro or Region 10 at some point in the future.”
The facts speak for themselves.
Flight statistics at the Laguindingan Airport complied by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) show that for the 10-day period alone covering January 10-22, 2014 some 304 commercial flights or 56 percent of 546 scheduled flights were cancelled due to limited visibility brought by inclement weather and the lack of landing lights and navigational aids.
Crowds of stranded passengers at Laguindingan Airport
Using the P1.5 million per round trip average operating expense of an Airbus A320 on the CDO-MLA-CDO route benchmark, airlines total losses for the 304 cancelled flights were approximately P228-million, affecting some 22,800 passenger or an average of 1,800 daily over the 12-day period.
This is about the same amount of damage caused by TS Agaton and its aftermath to infrastructure (P273.62 million) and agriculture (P253.49 million) reported by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) last Jan. 30, 2014.
The Cagayan de Oro Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation, Inc. (Oro Chamber) conservatively estimates the cancelled flights cost Cagayan de Oro alone approximately P20-M daily in actual and opportunity costs.
“This still doesn’t count indirect losses. A lot of business opportunities were lost, meetings cancelled, additional travel expense to Davao or Butuan for many, rebooking charges for international flights, new bookings for many who needed to have other options, plus a lot of other intangibles,” said a former chamber executive who preferred to remain anonymous.
The yearend report of the Department of Transportation and Communication on the Air Navigation System and Support Facilities (ANSSF) project component of the Laguindingan Airport Development Project (LADP) states that due to the June opening of the airport, the contractor is restricted to working only during night time, prompting them to request the DOTC for an extension of five (5) months. In short, had government not insisted on its premature opening, the ANSSF would have been in place and operational by June this year.
Coring holes in runway at night
But there is a way to fast track the installation of the urgently needed equipment if only the national government has the political will to undo this mess: a supplemental contract which would provide incentives for the contractor and allow it to field additional workers and longer working hours.
Thus, work can immediately start after 5:00 p.m. (or after the last flight) until just before the first flight the next day; and more personnel can be deployed for the civil works and for those jobs which can be done off the runway during daytime.
The contract amount for the ANSSF supply project awarded to SKY-KR Consortium was
P 411,561,000.00 or 32 percent lower against the ABC of P609, 258,191.41 and 42 percent lower than the NEDA approved cost of P 708,137,138.00.
Ergo, a supplemental contract providing incentives not exceeding the original NEDA approved cost of P708.14 million or even the ABC of P609.26-million can be considered a viable option given the economic losses now being incurred by the people of Northern Mindanao with the flight cancellations and loss of night and early morning flights.
This would also be fair to the contractor since the Original Construction Schedule of 15 months from March 2013 to June 2014 was based on unrestricted working time condition. When the national government insisted on opening Laguindingan Airport on 15 June 2013, it effectively cut in half the remaining 12 months of that contract in half.
Unloading materials at site
“I cannot believe that it is not possible to finish the installation if all the equipment is already available at the site,” a former chamber executive noted. “The DOTC yearend report shows most of the physical plant needed for the Airnav and lights are already 100 percent completed.”
Prior to its opening last June 15, 2013, the Oro Chamber vigorously campaigned against what it termed as the “premature opening” of the Laguindingan Airport. At the time, the focus of the chamber’s opposition centered on the VFR (Visual Flight Rules) operation of the new facility which would only be operational from 6AM to 6PMthereby effectively disallowing early morning or late evening flights.
Compared to a high of 28 daily flights at the old Lumbia Airport, there has only been a maximum of 21 flights allowed daily from Laguindingan Airport. The cancellation of night flights has constrained the shipping out of high value seafoods and vegetables which need the night flights to link to early morning flights to their markets overseas.
Delivered materials on site
However, due to the DOTC and the CAAP’s insistence that the Laguindingan was an all-weather airport, they failed to allow for the wholesale cancellation of even daytime flights due to the limited visibility which would have not been a constraint had the installation and commissioning of the runway lights and navigational aids been implemented as originally scheduled by the contractor.
Now, if only we can have that supplemental contract. A.S.A.P., please….
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