Island flights transferred out of NAIA by March

More than 2 million passengers affected

MANILA, Philippines — The government will commence its plan to move turboprops out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Parañaque on March 30, coinciding with the summer vacation.

The move is meant to “efficiently and safely maximize the operations at the NAIA,” according to the public-private Manila Slot Coordination Committee, which is composed of the Department of Transportation, Manila International Airport Authority, Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, Civil Aeronautics Board and the New NAIA Infrastructure Corp., the San Miguel Corp.-led operator of NAIA.

These so-called island flights, mostly operated by Cebu Pacific’s Cebgo and Philippine Airlines’ PAL Express, will now have to fly out from Clark or other secondary airports to reach popular island destinations such as Coron and Siargao.

Turboprops are used for these smaller tourism destinations as they can take off and land on shorter runways.

According to the resolution issued by the Slot Committee last month, carriers must transfer 30 percent of their turboprop operations out of NAIA starting March 30, 2025.

“At the start of Summer 2025 (30 March 2025), scheduled domestic carriers with turboprop aircraft must transfer at least 30 percent of their turboprop operations at NAIA to secondary airports,” the committee said in its order.

“By Winter 2025 (26 October 2025), all turboprop operations of such scheduled domestic carriers at NAIA must have been completely transferred to other secondary airports,” the public-private committee said.

Not covered by the order are those used for general aviation or the private planes used mostly by politicians to go to the different provinces.

Also not covered by the order are scheduled domestic carriers that utilize purely turboprop aircraft or those that have five or fewer aircraft in their fleet. These include Sunlight Airways, Island Aviation, Alphaland and AirSwift, which will be given until the start of Summer 2026 to completely transfer their operations to other airports.

Last July, The STAR broke the story that turboprop flights would be transferred to other airports.

Almost three million passengers could be affected, based on Terminal 4’s 2.79 million passenger count in 2023, or even as high as 5.74 million prior to the pandemic in 2019.

The Committee said the move is also part of enhancing the “overall strategy to efficiently manage airport operation capacity at NAIA,” especially because demand for slots at certain periods of the day exceeds the available supply.

Industry sources said the move could affect domestic tourism especially in the summer peak season as passengers will have to adjust and fly out of Clark Airport which is about two hours away from Manila.

Aviation experts familiar with the matter, however, said the move could help Clark Airport in Pampanga reach its full potential as the gateway remains underutilized.

For NNIC, the move could translate to higher revenues as local carriers utilize the potential of jets in NAIA, according to industry sources.

As of last year, PAL has at least 18 turboprops made by Bombardier in its fleet while Cebu Pacific has 12 ATR 72-600s and two 72-500s, on top of two 72-600s that are under lease.

The move to transfer island flights was also proposed during the Duterte administration but the plan did not take off.