Terminal delirium

THE SUM of P100 million has been allotted by the Department of Transportation and Communications for a feasibility study on the Clark International Airport terminal.

Clark International Airport Corp. President and CEO Victor Jose Luciano said so at Tuesday’s launch of the new on-line booking site of AirAsia Group and the Singapore-based Expedia.

This came in the wake of, and consequent to, earlier reports of the CIAC  reconsidering earlier plans to put up a P12-billion facility for budget carriers. 
“Although we have announced the construction of a budget terminal there are other options to look at. With all these massive growth happening in Clark, we are thinking of bigger projects…We will revisit and find out if we will put up a big legacy or combined legacy with budget terminal. To support our plan, we will send a team to the U.S. to look at the trends there.” So was Luciano quoted as saying.

May as well – for Luciano – to go revisit too his terminal journey, which itinerary I recorded here sometime back.

In September 2006, on or around the birthday of her father, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presided over the laying of the time capsule for the construction of Terminal 2. It was announced then that the sum of P3 billion, to come from the Manila International Airport Authority, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., and the Bureau of Immigration, among other agencies would be allotted for the project.

The plan did not pass beyond the publicity for the event.

Under the CIAC chairmanship of foremost architect Nestor Mangio, came the $1.2 billion proposal from an ALMAL Investments Co., a subsidiary of the Kuwaiti mega developer M.A. Kharafi Projects, “to cover all civil components of the DMIA Terminals 1, 2 and 3 plus the adjacent 1,500 hectares in the aviation complex strictly following the CIAC original master plan.”
Travels to Kuwait and Egypt by CIAC officials and even GMA herself yielded nothing but loose talks of Rolexes and Patek Philippes finding themselves on non-Arab wrists.
Thereafter followed the CIAC report of a group of major government-linked and private firms in Malaysia called Bristeel Overseas Ventures, Inc. (BOV) offering to infuse at least $150 million in foreign direct investment to immediately undertake the much-needed expansion of the passenger terminal of the Clark International Airport.
And then we came to read that in a regular meeting on May 17, 2010, the CIAC Board “resolved to accept for detailed negotiations” the proposal of the Philco Aero Inc. on the Passenger Terminal 2 Development Project of the DMIA, as it was deemed “superior” to the BOVI proposal.
That was the first and last time we read about and heard of Philco Aero.

The presidential elections and its immediate aftermath of rigodon in government offices, including CIAC, appeared to have doused cold water on the CIA terminal fever. Luciano though had some fever-pitch shoring up of his position, what with the alleged cable theft and other irregularities impacted on him, mainly by Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo.

As one of the last official acts of GMA as president though, she inaugurated the refurbished terminal, complete with two airbridges two or three days before she stepped down. That was the only concrete, albeit incomplete, improvement at the CIA terminal after all those billion-dollar proposals

In January 2012 the CIAC was high with terminal fever again.
Luciano announced that “they” are pushing for the construction of a budget terminal that will handle about 10 million passengers a year at the CIA.
According to the press release, “The new facility, amounting to P12 billion, will take three years to complete and make (the CIA) the second largest airport in the country, next to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport.”
“This budget terminal is the kind of terminal that meets the requirements of our airport in Clark. Our terminal right now can only accommodate 2.5 million. So we need a budget terminal to effectively say that DMIA is the next budget airline airport of the country.” So hyped Luciano.
In February 2012, CIAC signed a P1-billion loan facility with Land Bank of the Philippines for what it said was the Phase II expansion of the passenger terminal and other support infrastructure of the CIA, including navigational equipment.

Luciano said the bidding of the Phase II expansion of the P360-million passenger terminal was to start on March 5. 
We don’t know if that ever came to pass, but in three travels through the CIA since, all we saw were the boarded-up areas of the terminal which packed the passengers in some constricted spaces giving the semblance of a stockyard..

Only a month or two ago, CIAC announced it was seeking some P8 billion for a low cost carrier terminal, soon after upgraded to P12 million, complete with presidential backing.   

And this week, that P100 million for a feasibility study on what terminal suits CIA best – LCC or legacy or both?

With CIAC in this perpetual state of terminal delirium, Clark’s premier international gateway future could only be in coma.