IT is my dire fate that I have to pass the Ninoy Aquino International Airport under the much-ballyhooed new management every so often in a year. And it is my direst fate that I have to go through the Domestic part of Terminal 3.
Here in this overcrowded, uncomfortable setting where the circumstances result in the loss of manners and civility for those passing through due to the disorder, lack of commonsense directions or amenities like seats and enough sanitary facilities, is nothing more than going through an ordeal.
In all the mess, one notes the abundance of food kiosks that have sprung up overnight, taking over about 25 percent of space that could have been used for seats. As it is, half the crowd is standing or using the floor to sit. My traveling companion counted 30 kiosks selling food. Is this a food court, or an airline terminal? She ordered a bibingka, a rice cake that set her back P290 and a cup of coffee that cost P90. These are unprecedented prices compared to outside the airport. My restaurateur friend, also traveling with me, made a generous estimate that ingredients and labor of the little round rice cake was at most P80, so the price was more than 300-percent profit tucked in. And of course, a cup of coffee elsewhere would be P45 to P50, if not less, unless one was in some star restaurant. Yet most of the airport passengers are locals flying budget airlines along with some clueless tourists paying these high prices. The kiosks, of course, are just trying to make a profit, but they do have to pay the high rent demanded by the new management. After all, they have raised passenger fees and terminal fees to unprecedented levels. So, of course, the rents go the same way.
So, it was quite a joke when in the pushing, shoving mass before our gate, the airline employee said seniors, persons with disabilities and children first, and the rest to please sit down. There was nothing to sit on, every seat being taken. Everyone was standing in place for some time. In other words, standing room only in the Domestic part of Terminal 3. In the International part when last I passed, there were segregated seats at our gate — one section for Business Class which was empty because the passengers were at the Lounge, and one for Economy which had that Domestic part look of too many people and too few seats. Come to think of it, I have never seen seats segregated in this way at the gate in other airports of the world.
Then, of course, air traffic is congested and late, particularly in Terminal 3 Domestic. Yet they packed us into a bus to a plane that arrived late and when we got to it, the arriving passengers were just deplaning into the tarmac except there was no bus to convey them to the terminal. The walkie-talkie of an employee calling for a bus, got an answer “walang driver.” So, the arriving passengers had to wait while the outgoing passengers also had to wait in their bus until the late buses for the deplaned passengers arrived. And that was not the end of it. The plane had to be cleaned, so all in all outgoing passengers waited for more than half an hour in a parked bus on the tarmac. Shades of mismanagement, tardiness, unpreparedness, if not stupidity. Maybe putting passengers into buses that have to wait on the tarmac is their way of decongesting the terminal? Well, it is the wrong way that puts passengers in a foul mood. It brings on the dismaying desire to fly away from it all and the inevitable dread of coming back to it.
One keeps hoping that the paeans from some columnists about our new airport management are true. And that the management’s own announcements of vast improvement and better facilities are correct. And that the public is being served, not exploited. Unfortunately, the truth is otherwise. That is what brings on aggravation.