Balloon ride: Scratch one from my bucket list!

Clark Airport City: I’m here in Clark for the 15th Philippine International Balloon Fiesta that organizer Capt. Joy Roa said offers a great weekend for Philippine Aviation and anything that flies! This four-day international balloon event also features many other aviation-related activities -- aerobatic flying, aerial stunts, including radio-controlled airplanes and kites! Capt. Joy Roa has truly helped the country’s tourism industry promoting this great aviation event!

 I left Mactan on board a Cebu Pacific Air 5J 588 just before its scheduled flight at 5:00PM and arrived in Clark or the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) exactly an hour later. Surprisingly, I met a lot of friends on this flight who were going to Subic. We have no direct flights there and Clark is a very convenient way to go to this part of Luzon without passing through the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila.

I have always believed that when the US Air Force left Clark Air Force Base at the height of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo (and that bigger eruption in the Philippine Senate), the Philippine government should have decided to make it the International Airport for Metro Manila because it has two parallel runways and therefore can accept more flights than what the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) can take with its single runway.

The money used to build the NAIA-3 Terminal should have been used to construct a high-speed railway from Metro Manila to Clark. That railway could have easily been placed between the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX). Travel time by rail would have been a mere 30 minutes from Manila to Clark. The railway would also reduce road traffic on the NLEX. People who wish to ride their cars to the airport can do so without traffic.

As far as the NAIA is concerned, it could remain as the Domestic Terminal for Metro Manila. If this were done, it would have helped decongest not only the snarled traffic at the NAIA which has reached is peak for a single runway, but would also have helped decongest Metro Manila and reduce problems like what we saw during Typhoon "Ondoy".

This is exactly what I told Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) when our late friend, Press Sec. Cerge Remonde brought me to the President’s table, especially that she was trying to find ways to reduce the congestion that has plagued Metro Manila. For the record, the NAIA-3 Terminal was constructed during the time of Erap and it was plagued with problems and legal issues. It finally opened and operated under this administration.

The international airports in major cities in Asia like Tokyo, Bangkok or Taipei are about an hour’s drive away. From Cebu City for instance, it now takes us 45 minutes to go to the Mactan International Airport (MCIA) because of heavy traffic. With poor traffic management plaguing Mandaue City especially with the opening soon of the Cansaga Bridge linking Mandaue, Consolacion and Liloan, I can foresee more traffic snarls as we enter the Fernan Bridge, unless a flyover will be constructed in that intersection, yesterday!

So it really is in the Cebuano’s great interest to already start planning for the 3rd Mactan-Cebu connection, either via a quick Roll-on-Roll-Off open barge (which can cross the 400-meter length between Shell Island to the Port of Cebu in just five minutes) or through an expensive underwater tunnel from the SRP to Cordova. I’m sure that the late Sen. Sergio "Serging" Osmeña Jr. who envisioned and forced the transfer and the use of Mactan as our International Airport could never imagine how traffic has become this bad today. I guarantee you that things won’t improve unless we address this issue today.

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It was my first ever ride on a hot air balloon. I was assigned to the team of Wolf-Dietrich and Susan Kadach whose balloon sported the yellow, red, black and white colors of the German flag. Wolf showed me how a balloon is unloaded and prepared for flight. When the balloon is spread on the ground, they use a huge power fan to blow air into the balloon. But when you start blowing hot air into the balloon, it starts to rise and up we went ever so gently. But since there were no winds in Clark yesterday morning, we flew only a total of 300 yards and stay up for a little over an hour.

Then Wolf stopped giving hot air gas and the balloon started to sink to the ground also so slowly and we dropped into the parking lot, where suddenly we were surrounded by spectators wishing to have a photograph. We actually bumped into the ground, but the basket didn’t tip over. Wolf then taught me how to prepare the balloon for packing and loading into the trailer. It was a short, but unforgettable trip, something that brought out the kid in me! Scratch one from my bucket list!