CEBU CITY–The unveiling of the marker at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) Terminal 1 held Sunday, June 19, 2020, and led by President Rodrigo Duterte will boost efforts to establish the airport as a regional hub.
“With the complete renovation of Terminal 1, we can now focus on opening more domestic flights via Cebu,” said Louie Ferrer, president of MCIA operator GMR Megawide Cebu Airport Corp.
MCIA’s domestic flight frequencies have increased by 82 percent, and this is just in our first five years, Ferrer added. He explained that GMCAC’s medium-term objective was to establish Cebu as the hub for flights to the Philippines, particularly to Visayas and Mindanao, by maximizing MCIA’s strategic central location and infrastructure.
The efforts of the airport’s stakeholders had contributed to MCIA’s growth these past few years.
“Since November 2014, we have served more than 50 million passengers and doubled the annual passenger traffic. MCIA has seen significant improvements within this period, and it is thanks to the hard work and collaboration of the MCIA and Cebuano communities that we now have an airport that we are proud to call our own,” Ferrer said.
The unveiling of the marker, located at the new Airport Village in the Terminal’s arrival area, signified the completion of MCIA’s full renovations.
Meanwhile, Dicdican also highlighted the strong partnership between the public and the private sector.
“The success and milestones that MCIA has achieved in the past years are a testimony of a successful collaboration between the government and the private sector in delivering a world-class service and a passenger-centric airport,” said Dicdican.
“Another milestone that we are looking forward to is the completion of MCIA’s parallel taxiway/second runway which will sustainably address the growing needs of the airport,” he added.
Several government officials graced the unveiling of the marker. They included Senator Bong Go, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Lloyd Dino, Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines Deputy Director-General Donaldo Mendoza, Department of Tourism regional director Shalimar Tamano, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Junard Chan, and Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) general manager and chief executive officer Steve Dicdican.
Megawide chairman Edgar Saavedra, Ferrer, and GMCAC chief executive advisor Andrew Acquaah-Harrison were also present during the event.
The P1.8 billion renovation started immediately after the opening of the new MCIA international terminal (Terminal 2) in July 2018 and was completed in August 2019.
Prior to this, GMCAC had implemented several initial improvements to Terminal 1 to address urgent issues such as congestion and operational efficiency. Terminal 1 was originally built for just 4.5 million passengers per annum (mppa).
However, it was already handling 6.9 mppa in 2014. GMCAC took over landside operations of MCIA on November 1, 2014./rcg
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