For many Dumagueteños
like us,
who used to fly
the grueling
four-hour Manila
flight on board fan-conditioned WWII
vintage DC3 planes way
back in the 60s, that
evolved into YS-11’s and
Hawker Sydely’s, it was
then unthinkable that in
the 21st century, the same
Dumaguete Airport, now
expanded, is just about
ready to service a third
airline, the balik-Air
Philippines, on a total of
six roundtrip flights to
and from Manila daily, together with two other airlines, the
Cebu Pacific Air and Philippine
Airlines!
Notice how the Air Transportation
Office (ATO) is rushing the completion
of an expanded tarmac in order to accommodate
the increasing number of flights
to the commercial centers of the country,
including a daily morning flight to
Cebu.
Air Philppines was supposed to fly its maiden flight last March
22, then 26, and then only
to be reset to another date.
Cebu Pacific Air has three
round trips to Manila and
one to Cebu daily. Philippine
Airlines has two
roundtrip flights daily to and
from Manila. This is not to
mention the hourly ferry
trips to Cebu, and for many,
to catch up on the flights to
other destinations in the
country.
Time there was when as
we board the old planes, we
used to know so many
friends on board. Not
anymore today. In ten
flights, one gets lucky if he
would meet old friends on
board.
This means that so
many new people are flying
the Manila-Dumaguete run,
and we just don’t know
what they are doing here.
Well, in our usual journalistic
instinctive interviews,
we notice that we
have tourists, investors,
speculators, visitors, students,
balikbayans and businessmen
and hopefully not
fugitives. These are the general
categories of our plane
passengers in Dumaguete.
Automatically, this will
translate into a growing
economy. These people do
not just land here without
spending money here. The
plane passengers are the
paying and buying crowd.
They could buy your
land, your store, your
school, your resorts, and
anything they can lay their
hands on, while the innocent
native Negrenses are wondering
what’s so nice about
this place that people keep
coming and going!
When you live in the
forest, you cannot see the
trees. Most natives here live
in the “forest” so they cannot
see the trees, unlike our
visitors, who surf the
internet, and immediately,
they can see the splendor of
Dumaguete and Negros Oriental.
Ask any foreigner, they
will tell you that over and
above the urban centers,
they prefer Dumaguete because
our standard of living
are sophisticated enough,
we have great schools for
their children, we have such
a rustic ambience not seen
nor felt in other places. WE
have an active social life,
and most of all, the place is
not so expensive as in Cebu
or Manila, and you can go
there anytime, six times a
day!
So, it looks like the new
tourism slogan is catching
fire as we say:
