The appeal sounds reasonable enough: restore direct connections to destinations served by smaller aircraft and spare passengers the additional travel required to catch flights elsewhere.
In fact, the Department of Tourism and a few lawmakers have publicly argued that transferring turboprop services away from Manila has made domestic travel more difficult and expensive. Bringing these flights back, the argument goes, would help tourism.
The problem with this argument is that there is a queue. A long one.
According to information reaching InsiderPH, there is currently a waitlist of 26 applications for takeoff and landing slots at NAIA from foreign airlines, all of which fly OFWs, foreign tourists, and businessmen into and out of Manila.
The efficiency of flight operations have improved dramatically since San Miguel Corporation’s New NAIA Infra Corp. took over in 2024 and hourly runway movements are currently pegged at a maximum of 40 takeoffs and landings per hour.
The idea of accommodating turboprop flights therefore requires more than finding room on a terminal departure board.
So the airport operator has reportedly put the question directly to government officials: which existing NAIA flights by Philippine Airlines or Cebu Pacific should be made surrender their slots, or which waitlisted foreign airline should be passed over?
Those are big questions which popularity-seeking policy makers find difficult to answer with anything other than: “Ah basta, gawan niyo ng paraan.”
There is also the matter of precedent. Government may be asking for just a few slots for turboprop flights, but small exceptions would be difficult to contain once granted.
If one destination gets its Manila flights restored, why should Naga, Basco, Masbate and other communities accept a different arrangement?
Their residents also have businesses to run, relatives to visit and appointments to keep. Their tourism operators would presumably welcome direct access to the capital, too.
Any exception needs criteria that government can defend when the next politically-connected lobbyist arrives with an equally compelling appeal. Otherwise, the airport operator gets the task of explaining why some passengers deserve scarce runway capacity ahead of others.
And here comes the detail that gives this debate its particular flavor: Word reaching us is that pressure for the turboprop comeback is being driven partly by just a handful of VIPs who want to fly directly from Manila to Siargao.
Apparently, the journey through another gateway is proving inconvenient for some rather influential travelers.
So, whose flight gets bumped off to make their island getaway a little easier?
Senior Reporter
