NAIA is one of the busiest airports in South-East Asia. And one which is notoriously ranking among the worst international airports in the world (
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/20/travel/worst-airports-2014-sleeping-in-airports).
In short, here is how I experienced each of the three main terminals:
- Terminal 1: Old and run down. Cumbersome to reach from Makati City by car (traffic jam). Not enough restaurants.
- Terminal 2: I consider this the best terminal among the three. All personel is friendly and helpful. It's fairly small sized and walking distances are short. From the point where you get off the car to the gate (!), it's barely 100m-150m walk. The terminal is also easier to reach from Makati City than terminal 1. Choices of restaurants very limited.
- Terminal 3: Big and new. Seems to be built with good intentions and design. But is operated horribly: Most escalators are always out-of-duty. Elevators as well. Stairways are blocked off and only very few ones are accessible. Positive: Biggest choice of restaurants and shops among the three terminals. Very easy ad fast to access by car from Makati City (use Skyway).
A few days ago, my girlfriend and I arrived at the Terminal 3 coming home from our holidays in Palawan. We flew Philippine Airlines and we had a good flight so far, except that the aircon was too cold (but this is a common problem in the Philippines when travelling. Even my girlfriend found it too cold, and she is Filipina. So it can't be blamed on me being foreigner and not being used to the cold...). Once we had reclaimed our luggage (lots of, as we brought our dive gear along), we exited the arrival area. Knowing that the terminal is badly managed, and the queue of passengers waiting to get a metered taxi is always very long (waiting time around 1hr), we wanted to proceed to the departure area instead, and try to grab a taxi at the departure area. Hoping that the queue would be shorter there. So we used the stairs/escalator on the left side of the image below to access the departure area.
Once we were on the departure area (see picture below) we were looking for an exit to exit the building. Unfortunately all exits were blocked off or were exclusively used as entrances. So we had to walk across the whole terminal to use the single exit door at the other end. Once out, we saw that the queue of passengers waiting to get a taxi was extremely long, even at the departure area. So we decided to take our fate into our own hands and to leave the airport walking, to grab a taxi outside of the airprot (there are plenty of taxis in the area). So we were looking for a way how to get out of the airport and down to the public street. The guard said we had to go back into the terminal and go to the arrival area again. Unfortunately we couldn't use the same door we just exited from, because we had to go through the baggage screening again, which was at a different door (I never saw that on any other airport outside of the Philippines, that the baggage needs to be pre-screened when entering the airport). So we entered the terminal again through an entrance door and queued for a baggage screening. Then we thought that there must be a possibility to leave the building through the car parking. We asked the guard there, but he told us that there is no possibility to walk out of the building through the car parking (which is very weird. What happens if there is a fire?! I don't want to be there if this happens...). So we turned around again looking for the best way to go down to the arrival area again. Unfortunately the elevators were out of order. And there is no escalator to go down (only to go up). So we had to move all our luggage along the long stairway to access the arrival area again.
Back at the arrival area, we exited the building only to find our assumption to be validated: The queue of passengers waiting to get a metered taxi was extremely long. So we walked out of the airport, carrying all our luggage with us. We passed on foot through the car tollway station (see picture below) for the cars exiting the area. To the bewilderment of the guards and the car drivers. But there seems to be no other indicated way for pedestrians to leave the airport. Then we continued walking on the multi-laned road until the intersection where the public road joins the road exiting the airport. Just to wait for a public taxi there. It didn't take long for a free taxi to stop by, and it charged us P150 only to go to our destination in Makati City.
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| Tollway station at NAIA airport |
My verdict: It is terrible how the metered taxis are managed at the NAIA airport. Terminal 3 doesn't have enough metered taxis. And terminal 2 would have a long queue of taxis waiting to load a passenger, but as there is only one person issuing the passenger tickets, and only one taxi can load at the same time, it still takes very long until each passenger can board a taxi. Everything happens sequentially, while it would be so easy to parallelize the boarding process.
I can't judge whether NAIA is truly one of the worst international airports in the world. But based on my experience with about 20 international airports, I can say it clearly *is* the worst airport of those.
