DAVAO CITY – City Tourism and Operations Office (CTOO) Head Generose Tecson said that three additional commercial flights to Davao City from Manila will be opened, following the high demand from air passengers and the improvement of the local government’s capacity to test passengers for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) through a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction machine (RT-PCR) at the Davao International Airport (DIA).

In a virtual press conference, Tecson told reporters that the Cebu Pacific, Philippine Airlines, and AirAsia have been permitted to open one additional Manila-Davao-Manila flight each, starting this week, on top of their existing twice weekly flights on this route.

She said that the airlines would be the ones to decide as to when they are going to commence these additional flights.

For this week, the available flight schedules for the additional route will begin on September 24 for Philippine Airlines and AirAsia, and September 25 for Cebu Pacific.

The local government of Davao has required all inbound passengers with no “negative” RT-PCR test results issued 72 hours before the scheduled departure for Davao City, to undergo a swab test at the DIA before they can proceed with their trip to the city for a 14-day mandatory quarantine.

Tecson said that the other existing destinations from Davao City are Clark and Cebu, and they were also waiting for the reopening of the Iloilo International Airport to resume commercial flights to and from Iloilo City.

“We agreed also that the airlines can conduct hybrid flights—hybrid flights can come in with cargo and go out with passengers and cargo,” she said.

She said that the resumption of international flights would depend on the approval from Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

“That’s why, we are setting up there at our airport so that the IATF will see that we are ready for international flights also. Although last June or July, the first request of our mayor (Sara Duterte) were international flights only for Singapore and Hong Kong. But again the decision is not with us.  The decision is with IATF and airlines themselves,” she said.

According to her, arrivals in the city through air travel from March to August this year were reported at 128,542, a decrease by 90 percent from the 1,349,730 reported for the same period of last year.

She said that most of the travelers for this period were authorized persons outside residence, or individuals who travel for the purpose of work, and returning residents, which include non-Davao City residents.