CLARK FREEPORT – Some 7.5 million or 75 percent of the estimated 10 million Filipinos working abroad come from Luzon, a top local official of the Dubai-based Emirates Airlines said on Friday.
Gigie Baroa, country manager for the Philippines of Emirates Airlines, said this fact, as well as the emerging travel market in Luzon, spurred the Dubai-based airline company to expand its Philippine operations via the opening of non- stop daily flights to the Clark International Airport (CIA) here in addition to its three daily flights to Manila.
Baroa, speaking at the Balitaan forum of the Capampangan In Media, Inc. (CAMI) at the Bale Balita here, also said the other major reason why the airline outfit chose CIA as its second gateway is the “potentially big travel market not only for OFWs but also business and leisure travelers that need to be developed.”
She said Emirates is convinced that (Central and Northern) Luzon is a lucrative source of outbound travelers for business and leisure, as well as tourists joining pilgrimages. “Luzon is one contiguous area on top of having a highly-developed infrastructure system, characteristics that facilitate the movement of people. It’s a feasible market for any airline operator,” Baroa said.
However, she admitted that “at present, the outbound traffic is very erratic since we average only 25 to 30 percent (of plane capacity).” “But we know it would pick up because the month of October in the outbound market is really a lean season. We think it should pick up by mid-November because of the OFWs,” she reasoned.
“It can be better. We can pick up outbound traffic like pilgrimage tours out of Clark coming from the Ilocos region and Pampanga because these are religiously dedicated Filipinos,” she said.
Baroa explained that Holy Land tours pass via Cairo but because of the civil unrest in the area, the Egypt trip is dropped. “Now with the trouble in Syria, that’s an added problem. But those who continue with the pilgrimage tour enter and exit through Amman, Jordan and then surface through Israel,” she explained, adding that “for the same fare we drop the Cairo portion and that’s one of our disappointments.
But we know we cannot control world events.” Baroa said for now, Emirates is focused on the inbound and outbound OFW passengers. Official government data show that some one million Filipino professionals, seafarers and skilled and unskilled workers leave for overseas job sites annually.
The 10 million or so OFWs have remained a major source of dollars for the Philippines, keeping the local economy afloat in the midst of slowdowns in the more developed economies like US, Japan and several members of the European bloc.
Emirates’ non-stop daily fl ights from the CIA began only this month, filling a void left by airline firms that dropped the Clark airport for still unexplained reasons. Baroa said Emirates is undaunted by this development even as she disclosed that the inbound passenger load has reached 50 percent and the outbound 30 percent since it began serving the route about three weeks ago starting October 1.
“We consider this as a positive development which is reflective of the airline firm’s experience in the Philippines, a route it began serving profitably in 1990,” said Baroa. She pointed out that Emirates’ schedule out of Clark is “easy.” She explained that Dubai is only about 8.5 hours air travel from Clark.
“You leave (Clark) at 6:30 p.m. and arrive early morning in Dubai. So it’s like sleeping overnight during the flight.
It doesn’t destroy your body clock and then you arrive in Dubai. You wait for about two hours for your connecting flight anywhere in the world, since Dubai is in the center of the globe, well rested and you even have time to do your personal necessities,” she explained. “When you fi nally reach your final destination like New York at 2:30 p.m., you don’t feel tired,” she pointed out.
Meanwhile, Baroa said all that Emirates is now hoping for is for government policy-makers to reconsider a decision quietly shelving plans for the speedy development of the CIA as a premier airport or as complementary facility of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport including the immediate implementation of a rapid transport system between the two airports.
