MCIA on track for June opening

MANILA, Philippines — GMR Megawide Cebu Airport Corp. (GMCAC) is on track to open the second terminal of the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) in June.

“As of February, the construction of the new terminal is at 96 percent completion and we are all excited to count the days until we open Terminal 2 (T2) to the traveling public,” GMCAC president Louie Ferrer said in a statement.

GMCAC chief executive adviser Andrew Harrison said tests are being undertaken to ensure the readiness of MCIA’s T2.

“The most critical planning aspect for Terminal 2 opening is the testing of its operational readiness and the alignment of various processes. At this point, we are ensuring that all facilities and processes are ready for commercial operations in June,” he said.

Once completed, the new world-class passenger terminal building in MCIA will have a capacity of about 13 million passengers annually from 4.5 million.

Earlier this year, GMCAC started the operational readiness and airport transfer (ORAT) program designed to ensure the T2 can begin operations through testing of facilities, processes and policies, information technology and airport systems, and manpower readiness.

The program is being conducted in phases until the start of commercial operations in T2 in June.

ORAT’s first phase will start with familiarization and walkthrough training for all airport employees, followed by different trial phases.

In addition to systems test and manpower familiarization, the program will also check all standard operating procedures that are established by airlines, immigration, customs, quarantine, and other airport regulatory bodies.

GMCAC, which is composed of  Megawide Construction Corp. and GMR Infrastructure Ltd. of India, bagged the MCIA project under the previous administration’s public-private partnership program.

It assumed operations of the MCIA in November 2014.

Aside from the MCIA project, the consortium also won the construction contract for the Clark International Airport’s new terminal building.

When completed, Clark International Airport’s new terminal building will bring Clark airport’s total capacity to 12 million passengers per year from the current four million.