Coronavirus: Philippines to allow international flight arrivals for a month

The Philippines will allow international flight arrivals at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) here for a month from May 11 onwards, aviation authorities said on Saturday.

"Starting on May 11, inbound international charter and commercial flights landing at the NAIA will have assigned days," Xinhua news agency quoted the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) as saying in an advisory.

"The restrictions, which will last a month, from May 11 to June 10, is going to be implemented in NAIA only, with other international airports in the country having their separate restrictions," the advisory said.

The CAAP operations centre said inbound international chartered flights will only be allowed to land on Mondays and Thursdays, provided they secure a clearance from the Department of Foreign Affairs and CAAP for slotting purposes.

The advisory said that inbound international commercial flights are allowed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

But these flights need to secure approval from CAAP 48 hours before the scheduled departure from the airport of origin for the necessary slotting and rescheduling of flights in order to subscribe to the 400 passengers per day capacity of NAIA, the advisory added.

According to the CAAP, the travel restrictions do not include enroute flights experiencing emergency, ferry flights or cargo flights, air ambulance and medical supplies flights, government or military flights, weather mitigation flights, maintenance flights, and outbound cargo flights with passengers.

On May 3, the Philippines temporarily suspended for a week all commercial passenger flights to and from the country as the government sped up the COVID-19 testing of the growing number of Filipino repatriates returning to the Philippines on a daily basis.

The week-long suspension ends on Sunday.