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MANILA - Philippine airlines have tapped an Australian firm to manage their flight schedules, thus helping decongest the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
In a briefing, Transport Secretary Manuel "Mar" Roxas told reporters that "airlines have voluntarily hired an expert from Australia with a very complex, modern sophisticated software system" to decongest NAIA.
"This is very transparent, very clear objective measure of the airlines. Sila mismo ang gumawa nito at hindi ang goverment," he added.
The unnamed firm is a "slotting coordinator" that will reduce or re-adjust the flight schedules of the airlines.
Roxas said the Department of Transportation and Communications is reviewing the proposal of the third party, which will be tasked to limit the number of takeoffs and landings at the NAIA runway to a maximum of 40 events during peak hours, or from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
NAIA’s runway can accommodate an average of 36 takeoffs and landings an hour, but actual scheduled commercial and general aviation flights, including fish runs, went to as high as 50 events during the summer season, causing flight delays and cancellations.
William Hotchkiss 3rd, newly appointed director general of Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said the agency is implementing the Coordinated Arrival Slotting System, in which domestic aircraft flying to NAIA are not allowed to take off from their airport of origin if they do not have an available slot at the NAIA runway.
“The purpose of this is to reduce flights placed on holding patterns by the Air Traffic Control until safe landing spaces are available,” Hotchkiss said.
“This would also result to significant savings for the airlines because airplanes such as an Airbus A320 burns fuel worth about P7,000 per minute on a holding pattern," he added.
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