The Philippines government has revealed plans to build a new budget terminal this year at Clark International Airport in order to cope with demand.
According to local newspaper reports, the new budget terminal which will be located at the Clark Freeport in Pampanga will take three years to complete and will be able to handle 10 million passengers a year when it is finished.
Victor Luciano, president of Clark International Airport Corporation, which operates Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, said: “At present, our terminal capacity is very limited. Our current passenger terminal is being expanded to serve 2.5 million passengers a year.”
The new budget terminal, will be a separate project from the planned overall development of Clark as a premiere international gateway, and may be included in the government’s list of public-private partnership (PPP) projects.
Meanwhile, the current expansion of Diosdado Macapagal International Airport is due to be completed in 2013, and is expected to cost around $8.2 million.
By the end of this year, the gateway is forecast to handle around 750,000 passengers, however Luciano said that the number should hit one million by the end of 2013.
He said: “AirAsia alone is expecting to have five million passengers out of Clark in the next four years.”
Other airlines that fly out of Clark are local carriers Cebu Pacific, Southeast Asian Airlines (SEAir) and AirPhil Express; South Korean companies’ Jin Air and Asiana Airlines, and Singapore’s Tiger Airways.
