Figure Skating – the new NAIA sport

Manila’s International Airport, NAIA, has created a new kind of sport: Figure Skating in the Sky. Due to permanent lack of capacity and non redundancy of equipment at the nations first airport, airlines loose a lot of time and money.

NAIA Figure Skating

The pilots and passengers of this Bombardier Global 5000 needed a lot of patience yesterday afternoon. We observed them between 3 and 4 p.m. on our FlightRadar24 screen. Queueing up during 56 minutes before landing on NAIA’s runway 06 costs a big buck. This happens every day.

Morning flights are usually on time until 10 a.m. Then the delays start to climb. At 10:30 about 25% or every fourth flight is delayed. At 2 p.m. already 58% of the arriving flights and 51% of the departing flights are delayed.

Between 3:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. about 75% of all flights are delayed. Average delay for landing aircraft is 47 minutes!

How much?

The average 47 minutes of waiting in the air over Manila cost you, the passenger, about 15 Dollars.

Don’t think, that the airlines are paying for you. Their business is already a hard one and the Low Cost Carriers (LCC) calculate not by Peso but by Centavo.

And more fun this evening

One of today’s NOTAMs says:

B2660/15 - MANILA DVOR MIA 114.4MHZ U/S DUE SKED
PREVENTIVE MAINT. 01 OCT 17:00 2015 UNTIL 01 OCT 19:00 2015. CREATED: 24 SEP
02:18 2015

Meaning that one of the main navigation aids, the DVOR, is out of service between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Why do they maintenance work just during the peak hours?

If you are flying from or to NAIA at this time, take enough snacks and books with you. You may need to have a lot of patience. If you are on ground, then have a look at the situation late afternoon, early evening. Click on the different aircraft approaching Manila. You then will see their flight track and their Figure Skating. If you click on the blue dot (airport marker), then you will see the lists of all flights and the delays. The picture below shows this table from yesterday evening.

NAIA Delays 2015-09-30@19:38

Our recommendation: Do not fly from/to Manila’s NAIA. Look for other airports like Cebu, Kalibo, Clark, Puerto Princesa or Davao.

[GARD]