MICHAEL MEDINA
Editor-in-chief
OZAMIZ CITY--The uncontrollable influx of passenger departure and arrivals is nudging Transportation and Communication (DOTC) officials to widen the Benigno Aquino Jr. Airport in Gango, this city.
Presently, the airport runway lengthening works from 1,746 to 1,900 meters is already finished and Air Transportation Office (ATO) manager Napoleon Bael said his next move will be to ask for its widening in the hope that the landing strip can accommodate bigger planes.
Bael has declared in an earlier interview with PANGUIL BAY MONITOR that the airport is shifting image and is adjusting to the times by becoming a state-of-the-art airport.
Bael said that aside from the widening and asphalt overlaying works, there is also ongoing expansion of the landing field’s apron to 600 square meters in the north taxiway as well as the newly finished P4.8-million arrival building.
The passenger terminal, which also went through instant renovations, is now equipped with an electronic check-in counter manned by non-uniformed personnel to handle the flow and inspection of baggages.
For passengers, a metal detector walk-through machine was installed inside the pre-departure area where all passengers are ordered to pass by.
Bael likewise said that the 49 kilometer runway will be extended, 100 by 45 meters, in preparation for its standardization at a cost of P30-million.
“We need 2,100 meters of runway length and widen it to 45, then our next program of work will be the runway lights, we will also procure navigational aids,” he told this paper then.
“Importante kaayo ni sila aron ma-all weather na dayon ang atong airport ug bisan maot ang tiyempo ang piloto maka-landing,” he said.
An additional riverbank protection will be done by end of this year, Bael added, to tone down the attrition of the riverbanks of Labo River, which is only a few meters away from the west side of the airport.
The ATO manager added that as for now, their priority is the perimeter fencing, using the P93-million funding, after his attention was called by officials of Air Philippines in Manila who told him of their pilots’ complaints of people trespassing inside the runway.
It can be recalled that in July last year, government infrastructure overseer Sec. Cerge Remonde announced that seven airports in Mindanao will be completed, all totaling P15.51 billion.
The Benigno Aquino Jr. Airport is one of them, classified as a secondary airport under the administrative control of Pagadian Airport–Area Center VII.
Twenty-one other air terminals are programmed to be completed before President Gloria Arroyo completes her term of office in 2010.
The airport projects are designed to promote the development theme of the respective Super Regions, the intra-regional and extra-regional transport system that would make Visayas and Mindanao, and their key tourist destinations more accessible.
During her visit here last year for the airport’s inauguration, Arroyo said that the seven airports in Mindanao will help improve the transport of agricultural products as well as provide access to key tourist destinations.
Arroyo predicted the airport will be able to sustain the viability and facilitate the economic growth of Misamis Occidental and Lanao del Norte by attracting local and foreign tourists as well as investors.
To summon up, the airport was closed in 1998 after Philippine Airlines (PAL) stopped its operations of Fokker and Sunriser planes because of the small runway, too short for their jetliners and wide-bodied aircrafts.
Also, PAL was affected by financial crisis and labor disputes during that period.
Then three years ago, extension and expansion works of the airport started again after Rep. Herminia Ramiro said she was bent on opening the airstrip after much proddings from provincial and city officials who wanted it open to complement Misamis Occidental’s hard line eco and infra tourism growth.
The airport was reopened to commercial flights on July 11, 2007 with Air Philippines offering Ozamiz-Manila and vice versa routes four times a week, then switched its flight frequency to daily owing to the huge volume of passenegers and cargoes.
Early this month, Cebu-Ozamiz-Cebu flights via PAL Express commenced using its Bombardier Q400, 76-seater plane.
Also, Cebu Pacific Air opened November, last year, with its Ozamiz-Cebu-Manila route using the ATR 72-500 plane.
“Ang nagtabang ug anhi sa atoa are three provinces—Zambsour, Misamis Occidental and Lanao del Norte—especially now that Iligan and Pagadian airports were closed at present,” Bael said.
Travel time for the Ozamiz-Manila route at present is only between 35-40 minutes.
The Ozamiz airport is one of the 27 infrastructure projects in Mindanao given an overall P200-billion funding by Arroyo, which she wants prioritized for completion before 2010.