ON Thursday, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued Administrative Order (AO) 44, directing the formation of a joint technical working group to fast-track the development of the long-proposed Sangley Point International Airport as an alternative to the terminally congested Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), and the New Manila International Airport (NMIA) being developed north of the Manila metro area in Bulacan. Even though the concept of locating a large airport at Sangley Point has existed for at least 15 years, no administration, including the current one, has ever conducted a frank assessment on whether or not it is actually a good idea, and unfortunately, AO 44 once again seems to be putting the cart before the horse.
Sangley Point is the name of the piece of land occupied by densely congested Cavite City at the end of a narrow peninsula extending into Manila Bay from the Cavite shore. It was once home to American naval and air installations, which were eventually taken over by the Philippines; the former US Sangley Point Air Station became the Philippine Air Force’s Danilo Atienza Airbase for a time, and then was converted to civilian use as the Sangley Point Domestic Airport during the administration of the late Benigno Aquino III. The airport forms the northern or Manila Bay side of the peninsula, and is currently used mainly for general aviation and small interisland cargo operations.
Utilization of the existing airport is modest at best, and for good reason. Access to the airport is difficult, limited to one road from the Cavite mainland that must cross the narrow (about 130 meters wide at one point) peninsula and then the labyrinth of Cavite City’s crowded streets. Due to this, the Aquino-era plan to move most commercial passenger turboprop operations to Sangley fell apart, with the alternative of moving them to Clark International Airport instead only recently being implemented.
That an alternative to the outdated and terminally congested NAIA is needed is not in question, which is why the NMIA is being built. Clark, although it features an outstanding, ready-to-use airfield and good terminal facilities that have been expanded and updated to international standards in recent years, is simply too far (about 85 kilometers) from Metro Manila to be NAIA’s primary replacement, even with expanded road and rail connections. It will increase in value in the coming years as a secondary airport for Metro Manila, and a good primary airport for the growing Central Luzon region, but will not fill the need for a replacement for NAIA. The NMIA will fill that need, but it is several years from being completed. Even so, it will still be operational long before any new airport at Sangley could be.
The concept that the president has just ordered the government to fast-track would use the existing Sangley airport as the basis for the new airport, which would have to mostly be built on an area of attached reclaimed land that would be two to three times larger than Cavite City’s existing land area. That is a massive civil works undertaking, complicated by the fact that the average water depth is 10 meters; the reclamation works being done for NMIA are in much shallower water. The plan would also involve the construction of an over-water highway link to the new airport connecting the mainland to the tip of the peninsula. That would improve access, but would still be a bottleneck, as the only other connection (through the city) is virtually unusable.
Then there is the potential conflict with NAIA air traffic, which is a concern as the existing plan does not contemplate shutting down NAIA. The two airports would be only 12 km apart, with runways oriented in the same direction, which could lead to very crowded skies. This was noted by a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) master study in 2011 and updated in 2014, which also identified potential obstacles from the Port of Manila and airspace restrictions in the area of Malacañang as problematic for flight operations at Sangley.
The overall conclusion of that JICA study was that a major airport located at Sangley is technically feasible, and while it would have the advantage of being the nearest to the metropolitan center of any of the various location options, it would likely be the costliest, most difficult to build, and most disruptive choice. With the long-awaited and less problematic replacement for NAIA already well under way in Bulacan, it is puzzling why the administration would be so eager to push for the Sangley project now. It should seriously reconsider the initiative.
