Only Clark

AUGUST 20. Torrential rains and heavy flooding in most of Metro Manila – Central, Northern and Southern Luzon too – paralyzed the operations of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

With the roads leading to NAIA in various degrees of inundation, from knee-high to waist- and chest-deep, all its terminals were inaccessible to departing passengers. And those lucky enough to have gotten their way – packed like wet sardines in dump trucks or squatting atop padyaksikels, luggage and all – found themselves stranded, their flights cancelled due to bad weather. Sharing the lot of arriving passengers whose sundo were stranded in some waterworld somewhere.

The state of helplessness articulated thus: “The flood on Sucat Road is waist-high. Andrews Avenue going to Terminal 3, Roxas Boulevard in Baclaran, Tramo Road from Fort Bonifacio to Villamor Airbase are also no longer passable to light vehicles. Park ‘N fly is passable but you will be stranded before you get there.”

Best thing in a worst setting, to Manila International Airport Authority GM Jose Angel Honrado, was for passengers to “rebook their flights if they are not too important.”

Virtually, all departing flights, both domestic and international, at the NAIA were grounded. With portions of its runway reported to be also flooded.

As this developed, the Clark International Airport Corp. reported that two Philippine Airlines Airbus A319 from Davao, two Airphil Express A-8 aircraft from Masbate and Calbayog and Cebu Pacific Airbus A-320 from Thailand started diverting to Clark Airport with the rains triggered by storm Maring and the southwest monsoon obscuring visibility in Manila. 

An Airphil Express aircraft from Naga City also landed here after being diverted from NAIA.

Only last Sunday morning, a Qantas A-380 airbus bound for maintenance at the NAIA was also diverted to the CIA arising from lack of parking grounds at the Manila airport where another similar aircraft was also undergoing brief maintenance.

Despite continuing rains – the rainfall at Clark even more intense than that at NAIA – operations at the CIA have remained unimpeded.

Said CIAC President-CEO Victor Jose “Chichos” Luciano: "Clark Airport is ready anytime to accommodate diverted flights as a result of poor visibility and traffic congestions at the NAIA."

Chichos did not have to stress it, but all too clear there is the indubitable fact that the CIA is an all-weather airport with clearer visibility and better runways than NAIA.

Which, once more, impacts CIA’s superiority over NAIA and therefore the imperative to fully develop it as premier international gateway, in a twinning-scheme with NAIA, at the least.

For all the devastation caused by this latest scourging of the southwest monsoons, behind all these nimbus clouds that continue to rain down and inundate the land, we see the proverbial silver linings in the Clark airport. Alas, our government is still not seeing.

As with the NAIA, so it is with Sangley – pushed by the brothers Abaya of Cavite, Transportation and Communications Joseph Emilio and Philippine Reclamation Authority’s Peter Anthony to be site of the country’s premier international airport and seaport.

Think: What plane could have possibly landed at Sangley with the heaviest rainfall for the day? What passenger could have reached Sangley with Metro Manila and Cavite submerged?

There’s only Clark. So the Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement and all men of vision have long been saying.

There’s only Clark. So Mother Nature is now showing.       

So time to end all these noy-noying.

Clark International Airport as premier gateway, now!