Crackdown on ‘colorum’ aircraft cut flight delays, says MIAA

THE MANILA International Airport Authority (MIAA) has attributed the reduction in airport delays to its crackdown on carriers taking over the daytime slots of other airlines.

MIAA General Manager Ed Monreal said the move to fix the problem has led to a better on-time performance rate, with one local airline reporting a substantial improvement of 70 percent.

The improvement is “a really big thing” because it also means no air traffic congestion at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, he said.

Monreal said the crackdown on what he described as “colorum” aircraft was only one of many small steps to address the air traffic congestion. Colorum aircraft are those that fly out of turn or are unscheduled and take over the time slot allocated to another airplane.

“These (carriers) are like colorum. They have flights scheduled at night although they know that their aircraft or destination airports are not night-rated. So what they do is take over midday time slots. They fly in the morning although they do not have (a time) allocation,” he said.

“They take over the time slots of queuing commercial airplanes (for takeoff or landing). This then adds to the congestion,” Monreal said.

He refused to disclose which commercial airline or general aviation firms were into the practice, but stressed: “They are now toeing the line. They are now very cooperative and following their allocated time slots.”

He said the MIAA had also tapped the help of time slot coordinator Airports Coordination Australia (ACA) to rationalize and smoothen flight schedules at the NAIA toward the ideal safety threshold of 40 flight movements (takeoff and landing) per hour.

“Before, we reached up to 50 flight movements per hour…it causes a problem if it happens on the first wave. There is a snowball effect and, thus, the heavy (air traffic) congestion. So what we did, we spread the flight schedules evenly,” he said.

He said coordination was done with all airlines, particularly local carriers, and concessionaires to achieve the ideal number of movements per hour.

General aviation aircraft, including chartered aircraft and cargo planes, were asked to transfer their operations, while civil aviation authorities issued a memo setting sanctions on airlines that jump approved schedules./rga