Newly-established airline to serve BARMM air routes

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A new airline will start operating in the Bangsamoro region on April 24, which is poised to stimulate economic activity and attract external investors to explore viable business opportunities in the area.

Bangsamoro Transportation and Communications Minister Paisalin Pangandaman Tago and Mohammad Omar Pasigan, who is chairperson of the Bangsamoro Board of Investments, separately told reporters here on Saturday that aircrafts of the newly-established Bangsamoro Airways shall fly through routes connecting the cities of Cotabato and Zamboanga and Sulu province in the far south.

Sulu is one of the six provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The ten-seater passenger planes of the Bangsamoro Airways, owned by Filipino and Malaysian capitalists, shall also cover the Cotabato-Zamboanga-Tawi-Tawi routes, according to Pasigan.

“This is another breakthrough in the efforts of the Bangsamoro government to show to local and foreign investors that it is safe now to put up capital-intensive businesses in the autonomous region,” Pasigan said.

Tago, said agencies under his office that are together overseeing the operations of airports in BARMM are to cooperate in helping ensure the smooth operation of the Bangsamoro Airways throughout the autonomous region.

“We are happy that the business communities in the Bangsamoro region and their contacts in other regions and abroad are glad that a new airline shall operate in BARMM provinces,” Tago said.

Tago, Pasigan and representatives of the Bangsamoro Airways shall together officiate next week’s launching of the operation in BARMM of the Bangsamoro Airways via a symbolic rite at the Cotabato Airport in nearby Datu Odin Sinsuat town, about eight kilometers south of this city.

BARMM covers Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.