By Azer N. Parrocha
MANILA, Sept 27 (PNA) — An airport official on Sunday said that with the upgrade and rehabilitation works for the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1 close to completion, the handover will take place next month.
“There will be a handover of the completed project by mid-October,” NAIA Terminal 1 manager Dante Basanta told the Philippines News Agency in a text message.
Basanta said that rehab work for the terminal is 99.9 percent complete.
To recall, Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya earlier told reporters that the airport will be fully completed by the end of September.
Abaya said that punch listing or making a list of minor tasks is already done by the rehab project contractor D.M. Consunji, Inc. (DMCI).
He further said that by the end of the month, passengers would no longer “be seeing any DMCI personnel (here) anymore.”
The Php1.3-billion rehab work in the country’s oldest airport began in January 2014 after a structural investigation was conducted in 2010. No structural investigation was previously done since the terminal was built in 1981.
Terminal 1 has been expanded to accommodate 6.5 million passengers from its original design capacity of 4.5 million. After five foreign airlines were relocated to NAIA Terminal 3 last year, passenger traffic dropped to 7.1-million from its 8.4-million in 2013.
Among other upgrades in the more than 30-year-old airport include new flight information display boards, check in counters, weighing and feeder conveyors, new chillers, better lighting, and renovated lavatories. (PNA)