NAIA mess

Why do I get the feeling Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has reassumed his old position of Transportation Secretary? Over the past weeks, the Speaker has emasculated DOTr Sec. Art Tugade. He intruded into Tugade’s realm and the supposed DOTr chief surrendered.

There was the Speaker in a congressional hearing barking orders to MIAA officials and to the airline representatives on how to decongest NAIA. The Speaker was setting deadlines too, clearly unreasonable deadlines for airlines to shift terminals.

I also saw an ANC news clip showing the Speaker suggesting that they use the Philippine Village Hotel area to build another terminal. That was exactly the P20-billion proposal of PAL over a year ago that Sec. Tugade ignored. Hay naku!!!

Still, the Speaker shouldn’t meddle in stuff that’s clearly in the executive branch. He is now a legislator and running the transportation department is no longer his responsibility. Surely, the Speaker has heard of separation of powers.

Maybe the Speaker is getting impatient and I can’t blame him. Sec. Tugade moves so slowly and promises so grandly. And the Speaker has a soft spot for Terminal 3, the controversial overpriced terminal for which he had to answer a lot of questions in the past.

Si Tugade naman kasi. Tugade wants us to believe he is working himself to death which is probably true. But hard work must produce something. The only transport infra project actually under construction now is the new Clark Airport terminal and that’s thanks to Vince Dizon of BCDA, not him.

Anyway, back to the Speaker… I think he was being terribly unreasonable to demand Cebu Pacific leave Terminal 3. Because he once headed the transport department, he should have an idea of the complicated logistics involved.

How can the Speaker demand that Cebu Pacific move to Terminal 2 when that terminal only has a capacity of 9 million and Cebu Pacific’s domestic passengers are already over 10 million? With PAL’s 7 million, there is no way all those passengers can be crammed in Terminal 2.

How can NAIA officials agree to this “rationalization” plan that is totally irrational? They have been bullied.

The Speaker’s plan will be a big inconvenience for passengers. Right now, PAL passengers arriving in international flights can easily connect to PAL’s domestic flights in Terminal 2. It is the same for Cebu Pacific’s international passengers connecting with its domestic flights or vice versa in Terminal 3. We all know how bad ground traffic is between terminals.

The Speaker also wants them to move to Clark but he knows Clark is not yet ready for prime time. Let BCDA and Megawide complete the new terminal by the first quarter of 2020. But even then, Clark isn’t really a viable alternative to NAIA. It serves a different catchment area.

If domestic passengers being displaced from T3 really want to use Clark, the airlines will be there even without any order from government. Airlines are driven by consumer demand.

If the Speaker only wanted to show the Gokongweis how powerful he is as elections draw near, this is not the way to do it. He is not just bullying the airline. He is bullying people, domestic travelers who are mostly Filipinos he was sworn to serve. Many are OFWs who cannot afford the additional cost of land transport from Clark to NAIA where they catch their international flights.

The Speaker’s attitude to the problem of NAIA congestion reminds me of then DOTC Sec. Mar Roxas. Mar also ordered the airlines to curtail their flights as a “solution” for congestion. Never mind that new plane deliveries of Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines were coming in.

These two airlines bought new airplanes to serve the country’s growing market of air travelers. These two airlines believed the government story about economic growth and heavily invested accordingly.

In the case of Cebu Pacific, they also brought down the cost of airfare so that ordinary folks can take a plane to the Visayas and Mindanao instead of a long bus or boat ride. It is totally unfair to punish these passengers because government failed to build the infrastructure needed for growth.

If Tugade knows his business as transport secretary, he should be talking to the Speaker to take it easy. What the Speaker wants to do will make things worse at NAIA.

Shifting other international airlines around isn’t easy too. Computer systems will have to be moved and there are risks of failure that will affect flights. There has to be lessons learned in the shift some airlines did from Terminal 1 to 3 some years ago.

Unfortunately, Secretary Tugade is not even providing political cover to the MIAA officials who are being publicly bullied by the Speaker. It is Tugade’s job to talk to the Speaker. It is as if Tugade has abandoned his responsibility.

Tugade also has a responsibility to assure the comfort and convenience of domestic passengers affected by the Speaker’s orders. While I may not mind taking Clark flights since I live in Kyusi, someone who lives in Alabang may not feel that way.

Imagine all those thousands of passengers on domestic flights that must be cancelled or rerouted because of the Speaker’s order! The Speaker forgets these are domestic voters he will inconvenience… many from Davao. Puro mura ang aabutin niya the day this is implemented.

The Speaker’s meddling at NAIA will aggravate problems that will eventually be blamed on Duterte. President Duterte must act before the sh-t hits the ceiling. The President should appoint Mayor Sara to replace Tugade at DOTr. That’s someone with balls to cut the Speaker down to size.

Unfortunately for the President, his transport secretary has abdicated his duties to the Speaker. What a mess!

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco