Clark International Airport Corp. is negotiating with a dozen foreign carriers for them to operate flight services in and out of the air hub in the north, as the government seeks to boost the usage of the underutilized facility.
Alexander S. Cauguiran, who sits as president at Clark International Airport, said his group has received interest from Asian carriers, which are looking to launch services in Clark.
“We have talked to 12 carriers mainly from Asia. We have talked to Thai, Japanese and Malaysian carriers. The reception was good during the first round of talks,” he said in an interview.
He did not disclose the airlines the group is negotiating with, but said they will be invited for another round of talks.
Chinese carriers are also looking into launching services in Clark.
“China Eastern is interested to fly from Shanghai and Beijing to Clark. It is very much ready to mount these flights, but we are still in talks,” Cauguiran added.
The corporation is looking to increase passenger traffic to as much as 1.5 million passengers by year-end.
The airport logged in a total of 6,205 international and domestic flights with 950,732 passengers for local and foreign routes in 2016.
Clark is seen as the immediate saving grace for the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia), which has been operating at overcapacity for almost two years now.
But over the past few years, local carriers have shied away from launching flights or expanding their operations in Clark due to the lack of full-service facilities, its distance from the capital, and the dearth in mass transit going to Manila, among others.
It was only after President Duterte came into power, when local carriers decided to move some of their operations from the Naia to Clark. They have also launched, and are set to launch new services out of the airport in the north.
The government has programmed a P2.8-billion budget for the expansion of the airport, which will open its new terminal four years from now.
Several groups have offered to develop Clark through unsolicited proposals.
Claiming that its P187-billion offer is “fully compliant” with the requirements of the build-operate-transfer law, the consortium of Filinvest Development Corp. and JG Summit Holdings Inc.’s proposal involves the modernization of the airport under a five-decade concession, and will start with an initial capacity for 8 million passengers per year.
Its proposal, based on the Aeroport de Paris master plan prepared for Clark in 2015, also allows the airport to expand its terminals and runways to easily accommodate for traffic growth over the next 50 years.
The P250-billion proposal of GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corp., on the other hand, involves the development of the airport in six phases, leading to a total annual passenger capacity of 100 million per year.
Under a 50-year development plan, it aims to build two terminals and three runways, two of which will be independent in an 850,000-square-meter land. The plan also involves the construction of an integrated railway connection from Manila, similar to the one in Delhi, India.
This unsolicited offer is at no cost to the government, will not require any subsidy, guarantee or mandatory movement of airlines from Naia to Clark.
Instead, the proponent “committed to pay the government annually a share of the airport revenues over the concession period”.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. is also readying its own unsolicited proposal, even as it waits for a public tender to take place.
The government wants to place contract to develop of Clark under public bidding. It will be done through the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme. The website of the agency, however, did not enumerate the specific details of the contract.
Clark Civil Aviation Complex, located within the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga, covers an area of approximately 2,367 hectares with a 3,200-meter long runway and associated taxiways, aircraft parking apron, a passenger terminal building and related facilities. It has two runways in parallel configuration.