AIRPORT NOTES: As most returning residents are wont to do, we noted a few things at the old Ninoy Aquino International Airport when we arrived Sunday night after a grueling 22-hour flight from Washington, DC, via Detroit and Nagoya (Japan).

When our jumbojet disgorged its passengers who then filed out with those of another aircraft that had just landed, there developed a human traffic jam. Health workers were accosting every passenger to get his body temperature by pressing a strip on his forehead. (Ours was 36 degrees Celsius daw.)

Before the plane landed, passengers also had to fill up a form asking where they came from and to check on a list any SARS symptom they may have. By this time, however, we have gotten used to such inconvenient, yet necessary, measures.

Checking on the forehead is a variation of that routine where a traveler is made to stand on a designated spot and stare at an optical instrument mounted overhead to have his temperature taken.

While the focus in Manila seems to be on SARS containment, the obsession in US airports is to screen out terrorists and their explosives. The anti-terrorist measures in the States are an overkill, but Americans need such a defense mechanism and can afford it.

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MAKING ‘SINGIT’: We passengers are partly to blame for the seeming congestion at airports and elsewhere. Many of us Filipinos have not learned to line up and to fight the urge to keep changing lanes just to get ahead — as Pinoy drivers also do on the road with impunity.

The remarkable thing is that we don’t make “singit” when we’re in the US and other well-ordered societies. There is a lesson here for administrators cracking their heads over our supposed lack of discipline.

By the way, we would have preferred to fly Philippine Airlines coming and going, but the flights we took were chosen by the sponsors of our two-week program assessing the US responses to global terrorism in the context of 9/11 (the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the US that claimed more than 3,000 lives).

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OVERSIGHT TEAM: We hope to see a palpable improvement in airport operations, as well as in our individual and herd behavior, when we finally open Naia-3 (the airport’s controversial Terminal 3) to international travel.

Will the facility open under government management or under that of the private Philippine International Air Terminals Co. Inc (Piatco)? Or will a seasoned foreign manager such as Fraport AG of Germany be contracted to run it?

Last June 25, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo formed a Cabinet Oversight Committee chaired by Trade Secretary Manuel Roxas III to prepare for taking over Terminal 3 when the Supreme Court’s recent decision nullifying the Piatco build-and-manage contract becomes final. The ruling is under appeal.

Members of the committee are Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza and Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon. While the objective of the committee is laudable, the President’s packing it with politicians so close to the 2004 election may put its decisions in question.

It does not help any that Roxas the chairman is reportedly a godson of Piatco chairman Henry Go. We don’t question Roxas’ qualifications, independence and integrity, but you know how it is in this country.

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42 DEFICIENCIES: While powerful forces are trying to sway the final SC decision and the mood at the Palace, no word has come out on the correction of 42 major deficiencies uncovered last December by the quality inspectors of Terminal 3.

If it is still interested, Piatco must be pressured to use whatever funds it has left to correct the deficiencies, some of them pertaining to safety, instead of pouring money into public relations and efforts related to getting a favorable decision from the SC.

For instance, Piatco could (should) spend money to build the tunnel to transport cargo from Terminal 3 to the cargo-handling facilities on the other side of the runway instead of splurging on propaganda to make Terminal 3 look more than just a shell of an airport.

An audit had shown that Piatco tried to save itself the P700-million it is contracted to spend for the underground conduit by replacing it with a much cheaper, but hazardous, surface access road (which it has not bothered to build anyway after destroying the Nayong Pilipino park beside the airport).

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REPAYMENTS DEBATED: If the government takes over, will it spend for the tunnel and the 41 other items that Piatco has failed to complete? Isn’t the build-operate-transfer (BOT) project meant to spare government the burden of spending money that it may not have in the first place?

If Piatco were to be reimbursed after government takeover, how would the alleged overpricing be treated? What do we do with claims that Piatco had overpriced its reimbursement cost for the unfinished terminal?

Takenaka, Piatco’s Japanese contractor, was tasked to deliver a completed terminal at $323 million. Should not the government deduct from this an amount corresponding to the unfinished portion, the alleged overprice, and the undelivered features such as the tunnel for transporting cargo?

The question of whether or not Piatco should be reimbursed at all has been the subject of intense debate.

Some parties argue in favor of Piatco, because it appears as unjust enrichment on the part of government to take possession and control of the airport at no cost. But others point to Civil Code provisions saying that a builder in bad faith loses everything he has placed or built on the land of another.

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KEY POINTS: Given the administration’s seeming intent or interest in taking over and operating the facility, some key points must first be settled:

1. A financial and technical audit of Terminal 3 should be done by an impartial and internationally reputable firm. The results should be validated by the Commission on Audit and made public well before 2004.
2. Space planning, allocation and bidding of concession spaces should be managed by internationally reputable airport operators. This will rationalize the distribution of concession spaces and ensure that no mall is inserted into the terminal.

Note: It is pointless to mix the proposed mall with basic airport operations. The US Federal Aviation Administration will disallow it anyway. If we insist, the FAA is likely to ban the entry into the US of planes using our Terminal 3.

3. The government must consider charging Piatco rent for the use of land occupied by its unfinished project.

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DANDING ROLE: Reacting to our comments last time on San Miguel boss Eduardo Cojuangco being, we said, “the architect of the coconut levy fund,” Norberto M. Boceta, former deputy administrator of the Philippine Coconut Authority, said in an email:

“The P9.7-billion coconut levy collections which started under PD 276 that created the Coconut Consumers Stabilization Fund was never the brainchild of Mr. Cojuangco. It was the unanimous response of the private sector of the colossal coconut industry to the threat then of Marcos for military takeover of processing plants when the prices of cooking, laundry bar soap (which uses coconut oil) and copra meal (feed ingredient) skyrocketed in the early 70’s.

“It was mainly the brainchild of the late Jose R. Eleazar, the most cerebral leader of Cocofed.”

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BUNYE COLUMN: We’ve read in the Internet what looks like a regular column of presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye being emailed to opinion leaders. Called “View from the Palace,” his column appears to us as a supplementary medium for information and opinion emanating from Malacanang.

In his piece for the week ending July 8, Bunye recalls among other things President Arroyo’s surprise inspections of police stations, such as that one last Friday of the Central Police District’s Station-7 in Cubao.

Pornographic video discs were found near the computer of Senior Superintendent Rosendo Franco, who happened to be out of the country. “If law enforcers want to be respected, they must be respectable,” Bunye commented.