There are at least four airport proposals for the Philippines’ main gateway airport, Manila.
1. The consortium of seven tycoons and/or taipans to rehabilitate the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at a cost of P102 million to P350 million over five years to increase its passenger handling capacity from 42 million (arrivals and departures) at present to 47 million by 2020 and 65 million by 2022.
With Changi Airports as partner, the so-called “super consortium” includes the Aboitiz Group, the Ayala Group, Andrew Tan, Lucio Tan, John Gokongwei Jr., the group of the late Andrew Gotianun, and Manuel V. Pangilinan of PLDT and First Pacific.
They want to rejig the decrepit Naia by linking and expanding its three major terminals and developing a second runway.
2. The Indian-Filipino group GMR-Megawide, already the operator of Cebu’s airport in central Philippines. Like the “super consortium,” this group will also rejig Naia by improving efficiency (but not build another runway) so that it could handle more aircraft movements (taking off and landing) from 45 to 60 per hour (or one flight per minute). They promise to invest P156 billion.
3. Henry Sy Sr. in partnership with Wilson Tieng. They want to build a new airport out of Sangley Point, the navy base, at a cost of $12 billion for the new airport to handle 120 million passengers on reclaimed area of 2,500 hectares.
4. The San Miguel Airport in Bulakan town, Bulacan on 2,500 hectares of flatlands.
San Miguel Corp. president Ramon S. Ang wants to approach the crippling congestion and traffic at Naia the way Adam and Eve should have solved the apple problem. Rather than digesting it, sell it. And of course, Adam and Eve should have eaten the snake which to the Chinese is a delicacy, bar none. And there would have been no original sin.
Naia’s design and location could be considered the original sin for a major Philippine gateway. Today, it is in the wrong place at the wrong time. “It has no room for expansion,” say aviation experts. Crucially, Naia has safety concerns. North, south, east and west, pilots landing and taking off at Naia have to grapple with potentially fatal aerial hazards, namely tall buildings within 4.2 kms of their gaze. In case of trouble with the aircraft or with the weather, flights are potentially 9-11 bombs that could crash onto the buildings. So passengers taking flights at Naia have have to be prayerful. This makes Naia the most religious airport in Asia. You pray that your flight arrives or takes off on time and without delay (15 mins is allowable). Average delay is 43 minutes. And you pray that nothing untoward happens to you and your flight.
Even if the present Naia were expanded, it could not expand that much because it is in a cramped place.
So RSA wants to sell all the 650 hectares of Naia to generate revenues to develop it into a new central business district 6.5 times the size of the Makati CBD’s 100 hectares and 2.6 times Fort Bonifacio’s 250-hectare CBD.
At current values, 6.5 million square meters at P300,000 per sqm could generate P2 trillion, enough to jumpstart President Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” or to lick the nation’s 21-percent poverty incidence for good.
RSA wants to move the country’s gateway 27 kilometers to the north, in Bulacan where on 2,500 has. of land he commits to develop Asia’s most modern airport, with four to six runways, and passenger capacity of 100 million by 2023, and double after that. Total cost of the “aerotropolis”: P735 billion to be raised and spent in tranches of P150 billion per year, so SMC’s debt ratios won’t be affected at all. San Miguel can borrow six times its earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation. It has borrowed only twice its EBITDA. No funding will come from the government. The airport will come complete with a seaport, a sprawling industrial estate (where electricity will be the cheapest in the land), a government center, a business center and will be linked to Manila by five major expressways—a shoreline expressway, an airport expressway, the North Luzon Expressway, the McArthur Highway, and the Radial Road 9 Extension, plus a ferry service to Manila and Bataan.
RSA promises to deliver the first two runways in five years, if not earlier, assuming there is no Swiss challenge to his proposal before the end of 2018.
He originally proposed the project to the Aquino administration in 2013. Had President Aquino endorsed it, the first two runways would have been operational by now.
The Duterte administration seems keen on the San Miguel airport. It has given San Miguel Holdings, the project proponent, no less than five approvals, including approvals by the Department of Transportation, as a first proponent project status, by the Cabinet Investment Coordinating Committee, by the board of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) which is headed by President Duterte himself.
If Duterte wants to be remembered as a leader, builder and a modernizing mind in the mold of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, the San Miguel Airport offers that opportunity for a leap into greatness.
In the past, nations were built by building steel mills and car plants. In the 21st century, the flight to prosperity and greatness is facilitated by huge and modern airports of the kind proposed by San Miguel. After all, travel or tourism is the world’s biggest business.
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