MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
Back in the day, a Hollywood movie called Crowded Skies was dubbed a flop, a disaster movie that turned out to be a disaster.
Today, after what happened on the first day of the new year to our air traffic system and then on Jan. 12 to a similar failure in the US, could it be a case of crowded planets, such as the stars conspiring to produce a synchronicity way beyond our means to explain? Surely the two incidents did not happen as pure coincidence?
Whatever gave NAIA another black eye (after being dubbed the worst and most stressful airport), let the technical experts investigate. What I could not understand was our President taking it upon himself to apologize for the inconvenience inflicted on 65,000 passengers and why the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines waited so long to wake up from their nightmare to say something, clear the air or at the very least show their sorry faces. It took a Senate hearing last Thursday to hear their excuse, a maintenance service contract that expired two years ago – is this a (delayed) joke?
Our airport is bursting at the seams – has been for the last 20 years – and Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista wants its operations privatized, and the Bureau of Immigration needs more room and more agents to address the lengthening queues, and women travelers wonder why there are so few toilets, and just why aren’t there more efficient ways to move baggage out of the terminal, and why can’t we have a nicer parking lot and elevators, etc.
In the meantime, we are idly sitting by, waiting for another spike in tourist arrivals and the population growth charts before we begin to decide to plan a new airport. By the time San Miguel Corp. inaugurates its airport in Bulacan, it will be too late to design new ones for Cebu and Davao. Good to hear that the “world-class” airport in Clark, which is privately run, is poised for an expansion, while Sangley could be added to the list for an alternate gateway.
Our infra dreamers should talk to Jun Palafox – now there’s a world-class planner — and study his map of the future: 2050 is just a chart away.