Vintage items or junk eyesores?
In one portion of the general aviation area within the 400-hectare Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) complex is an open lot looking ghostly and eerie with at least 12 abandoned and outmoded aircraft parked there.
Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) officials on Tuesday said they wanted to auction the planes to free up the space that these have been occupying near the road connecting Terminals 2 and 3 at Naia.
“Those aircraft have been there for a long time, even before the present general manager of the Miaa assumed his post in 2010,” Ma. Perla Eslao-Dumo, head of the legal department of the Miaa, told reporters in an interview.
Dumo said one of the airplanes that Miaa plans to bid out was a Super Constellation, which was the biggest and fastest commercial airplane during the 1950s.
The airplane marked “N4247k” and registered in the name of a certain William Crawford is believed to have been sitting there for more than 20 years.
“We no longer have a record of how long those aircraft have been parked there,” Dumo said.
The Super Constellation is no longer serviceable and may not be able to fly a centimeter, but since it is considered a vintage item, the government may earn more from it.
“A German company has already e-mailed us asking about the Constellation. But the aircraft will be given to the one posting the highest bid,” Dumo said.
She said the Miaa was still waiting for clearance from the Hearing and Adjudication Board of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) where petitions to auction the aircraft are still pending.
“Eventually, after the Caap has decided on the fate of these aircraft, we will dispose them by auction,” she said.
Dumo said Miaa general manager Jose Angel Honrado took notice of the outmoded aircraft, calling them an “eyesore.”
‘Junk airplanes’
He had called the attention of the owners and ordered the disposal of the “junk airplanes.”
“We wrote the owners of 23 aircraft early in 2010, telling them to remove them from the airport’s vicinity within 30 days,” Dumo said.
Only 11 of them heeded Miaa’s request.
Asked how much the government will earn from the abandoned aircraft, Dumo said their value had yet to be assessed by the appraisal team that was tapped by Miaa.
Among the aircraft abandoned by their owners at Naia’s parking lot are five McDonnell Douglas DC-9s, which were registered under Orion Airline.
The five DC-9s, now with broken windows and rusting fuselages, were previously owned by Cebu Pacific but were eventually sold to Orion.
Dumo said the managing director of Orion informed the Miaa that he would coordinate with the Miaa on the company’s request to keep the aircraft in the general aviation area.
But to date, Dumo said Orion had not taken any further action.
“Our goal is to dispose of those aircraft as soon as possible, [we hope] by the end of the year, since the Miaa also has plans to use the lot for other purposes,” Dumo said.
She said several airlines had expressed interest in using the area for their parking spaces and field offices.
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