MANILA, Philippines - The Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), one of the worst airports in the world, should improve its facility for the safety of local and foreign air passengers in order to be internationally competitive, says Robert Lim Joseph, president of Tourism Educators and Movers (TEAM Philippines), and Network of Independent Travel Agencies (NITAS).
“The first thing that the airport will do is to ask the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) to build parallel runway which can accommodate all types of aircrafts,” Joseph said. “It can be done if the government will buy back the properties which were sold before and now are identified as part of Moonwalk, Multinational, etc.”
In addition, Joseph said NAIA needs a feasibility study for the improvement of NAIA 1, 2, 3 and 4 including a new cargo terminal and fuel farm for NAIA 3.
Fuel farm is a fuel storage build underground to prevent accidents instead of fuel contained in a truck.
Joseph pointed out that the government through DOTC should increase the salary of airmen manning the tower so that they will not be pirated by other countries, the need of constant skills training, improvement of their equipment, and some of them to be trained abroad.
Also a stringent security checking and reduce the number of security agencies assigned at the airport providing safety nets, Joseph said.
He added that there is a need to purchase an electronic gate to speed up the checking of Filipino passport holders as all it requires is to swipe and everything is recorded whereas an individual checking requires so much time and effort. Only foreign passengers will have to undergo normal immigration procedures.