Still no NAIA-3 this year?

Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza has admitted uncertainty over whether the government can open the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 within the year.

Mendoza was interviewed by reporters at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati City Monday during a seaports security conference and he said the government is now set to undertake the necessary corrective work on NAIA-3 as recommended by two foreign firms hired by the government to conduct a structural audit of the facility.

"We are now addressing the structural defects. Anyway, they are all correctible," Mendoza told reporters.

The corrective work will be undertaken by contractors hired by the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), since the Japanese firm Takenaka Corp., which constructed NAIA-3 for the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco) consortium, refused to make the repairs because of legal and compensation concerns.

Mendoza said that the rehabilitation works will take between four to six months to complete and will cost about P700 million.

He said that the cost would initially be shouldered by the MIAA and that there are plans to subtract that amount from the just compensation that will be set by the valuation committee formed by the Pasay City regional trial court hearing the government’s suit for the expropriation of Terminal 3.

"The decision of MIAA was to do the repair work by themselves and then charge it to the contractor, Takenaka," Mendoza said. "The MIAA can fund that and then add the cost (of repair) to the deductions from the just compensation."

However. he declined to make a new timetable within which the government will open the facility for full commercial operations.

Mendoza admitted that the MIAA expects foreign airlines operating at the NAIA Terminal I to resist moves to transfer their operations during the last quarter of the year when MIAA expects the rehabilitation work to be completed: "It will be peak season months by then so we expect them to resist a transfer by that time."

The government postponed the plans for a soft opening of the NAIA-3 on March 31, when Ove Arup and TCGI Engineers warned against the move because they both found structural flaws in the facility.

Ove Arup and TCGI Engineers issued separate warnings that opening the terminal without repairs could pose danger to the lives of people.

The government had first set a "soft opening" of the facility for March last year, but the plan was postponed when a 100-square meter segment of the terminal’s arrival lobby ceiling collapsed.

A subsequent investigation on the ceiling collapse conducted by the Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines (ASEP) found that the incident was caused by poor workmanship and the use of substandard material.