Senator Grace Poe said Monday there were lapses in the response of airport authorities and Xiamen Air on the runway mishap at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Aug. 16.
She made the statement after two Senate hearings on the incident in which Xiamen Air slid into the runway and blocked it during heavy rain, preventing thousands of passengers from taking off. The airline has been ordered to pay P72 million for the damage it caused.
Poe said the Chinese airline and the local airport management had many shortcomings that inconvenienced many passengers.
She said she would include in her committee report the admission of MIAA general manager Eddie Monreal that there were things they should have done but failed to do.
She cited the airport’s failure to convene the crisis management team immediately after the incident. She also cited the delay in the retrieval of the plane and the entry of “uncoordinated flights” in the airport after the incident.
Monreal said from an initial estimate of P33 million, Xiamen’s penalty had more than doubled based on the latest computations.
He said they talked with the airline’s finance officer on Friday and they got an assurance that Xiamen would pay.
He told Poe’s committee that Xiamen air chairman would also go to the Philippines this week to discuss the matter further.
Poe said she would recommend in her committee report a speedy construction of new airports and the expansion of the existing ones to address the congestion in the country’s gateways.
The officials present at the hearing told senators they had accepted proposals to develop Naia, Clark International Airport in Pampanga, Sangley Point in Cavite, a new airport in Bulacan and the development of Subic airport.
Naia, which only has a capacity of 31 million passengers, booked 42.5 million passengers last year.
In Clark, the senators were told that the expansion of Clark airport, which is being groomed as an alternative to the congested Naia, would be completed in 2020 and would increase its capacity to 12 million passengers while the upgrade of Naia, which will be developed by a “super consortium” composed of seven conglomerates, was scheduled to be initially completed by 2021 and was anticipated to increase capacity to 65 million passengers.
Subic airport is being revived to get it back to international standards. Sangley airport, which is being used by the Philippine military, is proposed by the Cavite provincial government and another private consortium as an international hub to handle some 70 million passengers. And a new airport in Bulacan, Bulacan, by San Miguel Holdings is expected to handle 100 million passengers and may be operational by 2024.