The Philippine Airlines (PAL) has confirmed it will open Davao and Clark (Pampanga) routes to Bohol before Christmas this year.beginning this November and December, respectively.
PAL Visayas Sales and Services area head Reyani Romano said starting November 1, PAL will fly four times a week from Tagbilaran to Davao, vice versa, using a newly-acquired 86-seater bi-class aircraft.
The national flag carrier will also be launching a daily flight—from Tagbilaran City to Clark, Pampanga, vice versa,—on December 16 using the Airbus A320, Romano said in a letter to the governor.
Gov. Edgar Chatto earlier reported this much-awaited development while he was attending the Philippine Travel Mart in Pasay City.
He also talked there with the top executives of AirAsia, which, like the PAL, is strongly interested in making Bohol an international air travel hub.
Both the PAL and AirAsia have considered in their aggressive plans the scheduled Panglao Bohol airport opening by the second half of next year, Chatto said.
The PAL had, in fact, already opened Bohol to the world by its inaugural flight to Incheon, Korea last June.
Boholanos in different parts of the country and abroad posted online, like on facebook, their elation over the additional domestic and international air routes.
They appreciated and thanked Chatto and his administration for the effort, although the governor has used to say that Bohol’s progress is a labor of all and a fruit of “shared leadership.”
According to Romano, the maiden PAL flight to Davao will leave the Tagbilaran City airport on November 1 at 1:30 in the afternoon and the inaugural flight to Clark on December 16 at 6:40 in the morning.
The much-anticipated web of Bohol’s connections by air once the new airport opens is projected to cause an unprecedented upsurge of economic activities and movements of goods and peoples.
This is supplemented by the improvement and development of seaports.
Chaired by Chatto, the Provincial Development Council (PDC) on Friday tackled varied major projects in anticipation of developments to come that will surely affect the vehicular traffic alone.
One of them is the required feasibility study for the fourth bridge linking mainland Bohol via Tagbilaran City to Panglao island via Dauis.
The governor hoped to start the implementation of the offshore bridge connector project, also known as the third Tagbilaran-Panglao bridge, next year.
Also, the PDC endorsed the proposed underpass and flyover to ease the traffic in front of the city hall; seaport, fuel depot, and water desalination in Dauis; and Dauis-Panglao streetlighting system leading to the new airport.
Meanwhile, First District Rep. Rene Relampagos is legislating in Congress the request of the municipal government of Dauis to rename the whole Panglao island into the Dauis-Panglao island.
This is to correct the “misappreciation and wrong impression” that Panglao island is all about a prime tourist island town called Panglao, he said.
Many tourists and guests, even including the repeat visitors, still incorrectly believe or must have not known until now that the island actually consists of two towns—Dauis and Panglao.
Off the island is a smaller island, also a tourist spot and a “diver’s Eden,” called Balicasag, which is a part of barangay Poblacion in Panglao town.
Urban planners have boldly projected the population of Dauis, which is nearest to Tagbilaran City, to hit the 100,000 mark just few years from now. (Ven rebo Arigo)