The Ninoy Aquino International Airport has been named the world’s worst airport during the terms of Rodrigo Duterte, Benigno Aquino III and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. There were years when it was not on any list–not only during Duterte’s term but also Aquino’s and Marcos’.
A post published April 24 by Facebook page MindaVote, however, erroneously claimed that NAIA improved only during Duterte’s time and blamed the airport’s condition on Aquino, his predecessor, and Marcos, the current president.
Pa improve na sana tayo noong panahon ni President Rody Duterte kaso dumating tong dalawang to (We were already improving during the time of President Rodrigo Duterte but these two just had to waste those improvements).
Supposedly as proof, MindaVote uploaded an image that juxtaposed three headlines highlighting NAIA as the worst airport under Aquino and Marcos and one citing the airport as the 10th most improved under Duterte.
Rappler’s headline for its April 16, 2014 article read, “Aquino apologizes over world’s worst airport.”
Similarly, the headlines for Philstar.com’s and GMA Network’s Feb. 24, 2024 articles were “NAIA among Asia's worst airports for 'business travelers' — study” and “NAIA ranked '4th worst airport in Asia' by UK website.”
On the other hand, MindaVote selected the headline of Philstar's March 22, 2018 piece, “NAIA named as 10th most improved airport in the world.”
The Rappler article detailed Aquino’s public apology over the air conditioning woes in the airport and its inclusion as the worst in the world in a survey conducted in 2013 by online travel guide, Guide to Sleeping in Airports.
The travel site had ranked NAIA as the fifth worst in 2010, the worst in 2011 and the fourth worst in 2014.
However, by 2015, NAIA was no longer included in the global list after multiple renovations and improvements led by the Department of Transportation and Communications, although it still ranked eighth among the worst airports in Asia.
In 2016, when Duterte became president, NAIA was ranked in the updated list as the fifth worst airport in Asia due to the bullet-planting scam plaguing the airport.
But it was no longer found in the list of the world’s and Asia’s worst airports in 2017.
In 2018, as the Philstar article reported, NAIA was named as the 10th most improved airport in the world by British-based consultancy Skytrax.
The airport was also not among the Guide to Sleeping in Airport’s 2019 list of worst airports. No lists were released from 2020 to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Travel was restricted during the first few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. No lists were released from 2020 to 2023 with the travel site currently conducting airport surveys for 2024.
In 2022, GMA Network’s May 28 article would once again report the airport as the worst in the world, albeit for business class travelers, as stated in a study by international storage facility Bounce. Duterte was still in office.
On Nov. 14, 2022, four months into the Marcos presidency, a post by travel website Hawaiian Islands listed NAIA as the third most stressful in Asia.
By 2024, as stated in the Philstar.com article and GMA Network article, NAIA was named as the fourth worst airport in Asia for business travel by Business Financing, a business finance research and information publisher.
The Department of Transportation recently entered into a public-private partnership involving the P170.6 billion rehabilitation of NAIA with SMC-SAP & Co. Consortium, which comprises San Miguel Holdings Corp., RMM Asian Logistics Inc., RLW Aviation Development Inc., and Incheon International Airport Corp..
The post has since received 2,614 reactions, 250 comments and 332 shares. Pro-Duterte pages with up to 388,000 followers such as Daily Duterte, PRRD - the Greatest, Rodrigo Roa Duterte Ang Bagong Bayani, and Baste Duterte Supporters have shared the page.
MindaVote, a pro-Duterte news page, has garnered over 555,467 page likes since its creation in February 2015. (MDC)