How a missing conversation left Bicol International Airport grounded—and why it reveals a deeper failure in government planning
Three months ago, I was tasked to co-facilitate the Masterplan Development Workshop for the Iranun Development Corridor local government units of Maguindanao del Norte. One of the case stories I presented was the Bicol International Airport (BIA) — a very good example of interface risks in governance. This is because BIA has a runway long enough for international ambition — but only on paper. In real life, power lines slice the usable length and keep bigger aircraft out. The lines weren’t new. The only surprise here is that the people paid to plan, approve, and coordinate a flagship airport somehow didn’t treat “clear the obstacles” as step one—so now government is spending hundreds of millions to finish a conversation it should’ve had before the first slab of concrete was poured. As Transportation Secretary Banoy Lopez announced, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines was ordered to allocate PhP 200 Million to PhP 300 Million just to relocate the transmission lines of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).
The inconvenient fact nobody can dodge
The transmission lines now limiting BIA’s runway existed long before the airport opened in 2021. They form part of the regional grid now operated by the NGCP, many of which were built during the pre-NGCP era.
That matters because it immediately kills the lazy narrative that this is an “unexpected” obstruction. It wasn’t unexpected. It was visible, mapped, and technically knowable long before the airport was branded as an international gateway.
Where planning quietly collapsed
Once government decided to build BIA—and later promote it as capable of handling international flights—the burden shifted. The question was no longer who was there first, but whether the airport’s design and approvals fully accounted for existing constraints.
They didn’t.
Because of the overhead transmission lines, aircraft cannot safely use the full 2,500-meter runway. Operationally, the usable length is closer to 2,000 meters, which effectively rules out wide-body aircraft such as the Airbus A330—the very planes needed for long-haul and international routes.
This is not an obscure aviation technicality. Runway length, obstacle clearance, and airspace protection are among the most basic requirements in airport planning. They are not “nice-to-have” upgrades.
Open first, fix later
Despite this limitation, the airport was inaugurated, celebrated, and promoted. Only years later—after pressure to “fully optimize” BIA—did the Department of Transportation (DOTr) direct the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) to allocate ₱200–₱300 million to relocate or underground the power lines.
The directive came after instructions from Ferdinand Marcos Jr., with officials now promising bigger aircraft, lower fares, and international connectivity.
All of that sounds great—and all of it should have been guaranteed before opening day.
Calling the transmission lines the “final hurdle” to international operations is revealing. Obstacle clearance is not a finishing touch. It is foundational.
This isn’t bad luck—it’s siloed governance
The real issue here is not engineering difficulty. It is institutional behavior.
Major infrastructure projects in the Philippines are often planned in silos:
- Airports are planned as airports.
- Power lines are planned as power lines.
- Roads, ports, and utilities are each treated as separate success stories.
The interfaces—where one project physically and operationally collides with another—are where things fall apart.
In the case of BIA, no binding, early agreement forced the relevant agencies to sit down and answer basic questions:
- Who pays to relocate the lines?
- When must relocation be completed relative to runway commissioning?
- Is the airport allowed to open without full compliance?
Those questions were deferred. The cost of deferral is now measured in hundreds of millions of pesos, lost years of international potential, and a runway that underperforms its promise.
Who pays for not talking?
As usual, the answer is: the public.
Taxpayers paid for an airport that cannot yet deliver what it was advertised to do. They will now pay again to retrofit a solution that should have been embedded in the original plan.
This is not a case of corruption in the dramatic sense. It is something more banal—and more dangerous: institutional complacency, where no one is penalized for assuming another agency will deal with the problem later.
The broader lesson
Bicol International Airport should be a warning sign, not just a local issue.
If government continues to plan infrastructure as isolated projects rather than interconnected systems, the same story will repeat:
- impressive ribbon-cuttings,
- followed by expensive “optimization” years later,
- explained away as growing pains.
In reality, these are planning failures—not because the challenges were impossible, but because the conversations never happened when they mattered most.
A simple test of good governance
Good planning is not about fixing problems quickly once they explode. It is about preventing predictable problems from happening at all.
The power lines were there. The airport plans came later.
The conflict was obvious.
The cost of inaction is now undeniable.
When infrastructure projects don’t talk to each other, development doesn’t take off—it just taxis in place, waiting for a clearance that should have been issued years ago.
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