Poor connectivity

Yesterday my paternal grandmother’s home province of Pangasinan celebrated its 436th founding day. I would have enjoyed visiting Lingayen again for the festivities, but it’s a grueling drive from Manila.

Many tourists would feel the same way, which is a shame because Pangasinan has good beaches and other natural attractions and historical sites that deserve visiting. It has its distinctive cuisine and a culture immortalized by its native son, National Artist for Literature Frankie Sionil Jose.

A commercial airport would help. The provincial government has been told that Lingayen airport, built by the Americans in 1945 and then left to stagnate, may finally be developed into a commercial gateway that can accommodate small aircraft by 2019. The next administration will have to prioritize airport construction and upgrading nationwide if it wants to boost economic development.

The most significant airport project under President Aquino, the Laguindingan Airport in Misamis Oriental, was started during the term of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2006. When it finally opened in 2013, the lack of night landing facilities earned Laguindingan the moniker “hindi ma-landingan” airport. The situation has gradually improved, according to some reports.

Under P-Noy, Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, which had serviced only domestic flights since 2008, also became fully operational in 2014. The move eased congestion at the NAIA Terminal 1 although not the traffic on the runway, which worsened and remains atrocious, delaying all flights nationwide.

NAIA-3 looks like a modern gateway, and its operation has helped the NAIA lose its rating in a travel website as the world’s worst airport. But the nation’s principal airport might regain the dubious honor in the wake of the bullet planting scandal, collapsing ceilings, and now a crippling five-hour blackout at the NAIA-3.

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On Monday Malacañang reportedly summoned Transport Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya and his former boss in Cory Aquino’s Presidential Security Group, Jose Angel Honrado, now the general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority.

It looks like the two, instead of getting a scolding, were simply reassured by Malacañang that they were still co-terminus with P-Noy. Yesterday Honrado blamed bad luck – “minalas kami” – for the weekend blackout at the NAIA-3 that prompted the cancellation of 87 domestic flights and delay of four international flights.

We can guess that bad luck was the same explanation given to Malacañang (and readily accepted by P-Noy) for the incident. This led to observations that bad luck also befell Filipinos – minalas din kami – when P-Noy picked his transport and airport officials.

P-Noy should at least have asked his pet officials what luck has got to do with 10 generator sets failing to work when the power tripped on Saturday night for 45 seconds. That was precisely the sort of contingency for which generators are used.

Unfortunately for thousands of passengers, the generators failed to do their work. Abaya explained that the generators did kick in when the power tripped, but the battery-powered switchgear was drained.

My non-technical understanding of this explanation is that the generators were not sufficiently charged. This is a normal problem in devices that require regular charging. How many times have you switched on a rechargeable portable emergency lamp during a power outage, only to realize that it has been drained or lacks sufficient charge?

But that’s a portable lamp for household use, and you and I can be excused for our negligence. In the case of an entire airport terminal, shouldn’t there be someone in charge of constantly seeing to it that the facility’s generator sets will work as expected in moments of need? Why are taxpayers spending for such generators if these won’t work during contingencies?

If negligence is the culprit, shouldn’t the person in charge be held accountable for the embarrassment brought to the nation by a blackout that cripples the newest terminal of the country’s main airport?

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If we can’t even straighten out services at the NAIA, we can’t hope for airport improvements elsewhere in the country.

Proposals to develop Clark into a secondary international gateway or perhaps a replacement for the NAIA have been kicked around for years. At one point the proposal became bogged down in discussions about a name change because P-Noy reportedly didn’t like the fact that the facility had been renamed in honor of his predecessor’s late father Diosdado Macapagal. Then someone – probably a Caviteño like Abaya – pitched for a new gateway to be built instead at Sangley Point in Cavite.

Now P-Noy’s watch is ending without even a solid feasibility study for Manila airport expansion that might be presented to investors for consideration. Not that there would be a mad rush to invest; with the still unfinished travails of German airport operator Fraport AG involving NAIA-3, top industry players would think twice, three times before wading into Philippine airport development.

It will probably take a generation or two before the country sees enough regional airports in operation and a decent international gateway servicing Metro Manila and neighboring areas.

This has been a big setback to tourism development. As several of our neighbors are showing, connectivity drives tourism. Travelers prefer direct flights to tourist destinations, especially when the alternative is a transit stop at the chaotic NAIA. Such stops add precious hours to exhausting trips, and are aggravated when the connecting flights are delayed, as almost all flights are at the NAIA.

Direct flights between Seoul and Kalibo and Mactan, for example, have been a boon to tourism in Boracay and Cebu. Think of what direct flights can do for Albay tourism, or what modern airports can do for Pangasinan or Baguio City. Instead of modernizing, airport operations have retrogressed in Baguio, the nation’s summer capital, where the pine trees have been replaced by ever-expanding favelas.

In the absence of a commercial airport, Pangasinan at least is developing its port to attract cruise ships. Yesterday a cruise ship with over 400 passengers docked at the Hundred Islands National Park in Alaminos.

Sea cruises are a great way to see our islands, but these are for travelers with some time on their hands. Those with limited time will still opt for commercial air travel or high-speed train. Both are not available for Pangasinan and in many other provinces.