The Transportation Department said Tuesday it will auction the contract to expand Clark International Airport within the next 10 months.
“I have proposed that it would be done by private sector under PPP [public private partnership] because of the issue of core competence. It would be done in 10 months or so,” Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade told reporters.
“The President declared it as priority project. It would now be PPP,” he added.
Clark International Airport Corp. operates and maintain the international gateway at the former US military airbase. The airport has an annual capacity of four million passengers.
CIAC also plans to build a P1.2-billion low-cost carrier passenger terminal building, designed by Aeroport De Paris of France.
The new facility can accommodate as many as 15 million passengers annually.
Airlines operating in Clark include Qatar Airways, Cebu Pacific, Tigerair Air, Jin Air, Asiana Airlines, Dragon Air, Air Asia Berhad and Emirates Airlines.
These airlines mount flights to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Macau, Pudong, Incheon, Doha, Dubai, Davao, Cebu and Kalibo.
Tugade said the country’s three major airlines agreed to study the possibility of transferring some of their domestic flights to Clark.
“We are talking to them, we’ve asked to transfer some of their missionary routes to Clark,” he said.
Philippine Airlines president and chief operating officer Jaime Bautista earlier said the airline would study the impact of the proposal to transfer its turboprop operations on the passengers and on the company’s operation cost.
PAL owns four Bomardier DHC 8-300 aircraft and five Bombardier DHC 8-400 aircraft which PAL dry leased to PAL Express.
Bautista said the government should provide additional infrastructure before transferring some of its operations to Clark.
The transfer of the airlines’ turboprop operations to Clark was part of the government’s program to decongest Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Japan International Cooperation Agency said Naia was expected to exceed its maximum handling capacity this year, when the airport would handle 37.78 million passengers. Its maximum handling capacity stands at 35 million passengers a year.
