Terminal case

Zona Libre/Bong Z. Lacson

"THE EXPANSION of the passenger terminal is to accommodate the coming of the long-haul flights from the Middle East, the wide-body planes of Emirates and Qatar, and Clark is being readied for the coming of more of these long-haul flights."

Coming in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of Philippine AirAsia’s suspension of its Clark flights and moving to NAIA, the declaration of CIAC President-CEO Victor Jose I. Luciano has been widely taken as some pampalubag loob over the pain for some great loss.

Yeah, so Philippines AirAsia – a low cost carrier – is leaving Clark. So what? Long- haul big leaguers Emirates and Qatar are coming. More gains than loss there for the Clark airport. 
Emirates Airlines starts its daily Dubai-Clark-Dubai flights Oct. 1. Qatar Airways will roll out its Doha-Clark-Doha route on October 28. This effectively links up Central and Northern Luzon to the Gulf, and Europe – here we come!

Precisely to that end is the P360-million terminal project, geared to a capacity of five million passengers, and expected to be complete before the end of September.

I don’t know how Mr. Luciano will make good on that promised completion.

Thursday last week, I flew to Hong Kong – via AirAsia, yeah they still fly the Clark route till October 9 – and saw the scale and scope of (non)completion of construction at the Clark terminal.

It’s two weeks before A-Day for Emirates and the terminal is still way behind its finishing phase. As much the way I saw it, as the way I was inconvenienced by all that construction – boxed in by all those panels at the departure lounge, and queuing right at the arrival gate on my return Monday noon to the immigration counters. There were but two flights that time from Hong Kong both – AirAsia and Cebu Pacific and all six slots of the immigration desks were manned.

I can only shudder at the prospective mayhem of October 1 – what with the Emirates’ Boeing 777 with 438 passengers adding up to the other flights      

But I take Mr. Luciano’s word for it – that the terminal will be completed by the end of the month. As I have taken his word in everything about the Clark airport, most specially its terminal.

I believed Mr. Luciano when he proclaimed the so-called Terminal 2 project would be finished before Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stepped down from the presidency.
In September 2006, GMA 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 will be allotted for the project.
I believed Mr. Luciano when he announced 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.”
I believed Mr. Luciano when his CIAC press released that a group of major government-linked and private firms in Malaysia called Bristeel Overseas Ventures, Inc. (BOVI) offered 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.

I believed Mr. Luciano when I 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.
I believed Mr. Luciano when – in January 2012 -- announced that “they” are pushing for the construction of a budget terminal that will handle about 10 million passengers a year at the CIA.
“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 Mr. Luciano said. So I believed him.

As you may well see, nothing that Mr. Luciano verbalized has ever been realized. Still, I believed him.

Now, he is saying that the terminal will be finished on September 30 at the latest.

And I cannot but help believing him.

Yeah, you’re right. More than Mr. Luciano, it is I that suffer from a terminal case of…whatever.