PASSENGERS form queues at the airport. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — The Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) is now in the middle of the Christmas holiday peak as it records 125,000 passengers a day, the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) said Friday.
MIAA Senior Assistant General Manager Bryan Co said this influx of passengers is already expected as many individuals seek to come home in time for Christmas celebration.
“Currently we’re in the middle of the peak of what we anticipated for this December season,” he said in a public briefing.
“We expected this talaga na talagang this week starting last Monday talagang tuluy-tuloy po ang pagtataas ng ating mga number of passengers that are using our airports,” Co added.
(We expected that the surge of passengers would continue.)
He said many passengers from abroad want to go home to the Philippines for the holidays.
Some want to go to their provinces.
Co said Naia is recording higher passenger traffic than in the past two years during the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Talagang itong 2022, it’s actually 95% of the pre-COVID levels na,” he said.
The MIAA official said that they expect that this surge of passengers will continue until the rest of 2022 and January of 2023 since many of those who went to the Philippines will go back to their origin of destination after the holiday.
“We expect this to continue, and we think that by the end of December, we will log around 3.2 to 3.5 million passengers that have used our Naiaterminals,” he added.