CLARK FREEPORT – The Clark Development Corp. (CDC) is in a quandary over height restriction standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) amid plans to transform the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) here into the country’s premiere gateway.
If the highest standards of the Canada-based organization were to be observed in the vicinity of the DMIA, high-rise plans in most of this freeport west of the airport as well as in the business district of nearby Mabalacat town in the east will have to be dwarfed.
Bernardo Angeles, CDC vice president for investments and promotions, said that applications for building height clearance permits filed by seven investors here have remained pending before the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAPP) following the ICAO recommendations on height restrictions.
Angeles said that under ICAO recommendations, a four-kilometer area from the DMIA would have to be classified as a no-build zone.
“Even the existing Holiday Inn and Oxford hotels would be found in excess of height restrictions within four kilometers west of the DMIA. To comply with ICAO, the two hotels would have to be leveled down to only two stories,” Angeles noted during a recent meeting here of the Metro Clark Advisory Council (MCAC). The two hotels have five floors.
Earlier, officials of the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC), which runs the DMIA, expressed confidence that a new world-class passenger terminal will be ready at the airport by 2010. Both Pres. Arroyo and former Pres. Fidel Ramos had designated the DMIA as the next premiere international gateway of the Philippines.
CDC president and chief executive officer Benigno Ricafort said, however, the CDC has asked the ICAO to help come out with another study that could divert flight patterns at the DMIA in a way that height restrictions at the western and eastern vicinity of the airport would not be too limiting.
Angeles noted that ICAO officials have used as reference point for height restrictions the area proposed for a third runway at the DMIA.
In the meantime, Angeles said the CDC has asked the CAAP to approve the height clearance permits for buildings proposed in areas covered by the “shielding effect” of natural barriers such as Lily Hill and existing structures “which are already there anyway”.
Height clearance permit from the CAAP is a pre-requisite for securing a building permit from the local government engineering office.
Last May, Transportation and Communications Sec. Leandro Mendoza instructed CAAP, formerly the Air Transportation Office, to conduct a “risk analysis and due diligence” on Clark investors whose structures may affect the enforcement of aviation safety standards”. He also invited ICAO officials to help in this task.
ICAO, whose headquarters is in Montreal, Canada, is an agency of the United Nations that codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth.
The ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended practices concerning air navigation, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation. In addition, the ICAO defines the protocols for air accident investigation followed by transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, commonly known as the Chicago Convention.
