House Deputy Speaker and Cebu 3rd District Rep. Pablo John Garcia said there is no a compelling reason to rename the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) to Lapu-Lapu International Airport.
The House Committee on Transportation, chaired by Samar Rep. Edgar Mary Sarmiento, recently conducted a hearing through a virtual platform on the bills seeking to change the name of MCIA as homage to Lapu-Lapu, the chieftain of Mactan island and recognized as the first Philippine hero for defeating Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan.
Garcia, however, manifested his opposition to the proposal during the House Committee on Transportation’s initial deliberation of House Bills 18, 2222, and 5375 that seek to change the name of the busiest airport in Central Visayas.
The lawmaker said MCIA is “perfectly descriptive” of the geographic fact that the airport is on the island of Mactan in the province of Cebu.
“Generations of Cebuanos for whom the airport was built have always known it as Mactan and have never thought it needed to be changed for any reason.”
“From the time it was built in 1956 as an airbase, its conversion as a civilian airport in the mid-1960s, to the present, it has always been named Mactan and generations of Cebuanos for whom the airport was built have always known it as Mactan, and have never thought it needed to be changed for any reason,” the legislator stressed.
He said changing the name of the airport would not only erase more than 50 years of history but also the brand recognition attached to Mactan-Cebu as a recognized travel hub in the central Philippines.
Even before the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA), the governing body that manages the airport gained its charter in 1990, airport officials have spent resources, time, and effort to market the airport under the current name, locally and internationally.
“Since 2014, when airport operations were awarded to private concessionaire GMR-Megawide Airport Corporation, millions of pesos in marketing and advertising money, and unquantifiable resources, time, and effort have been invested and expended to market the airport as Mactan-Cebu,” Garcia said.
He expressed the belief that if the intention is to honor the hero Lapu-Lapu, supreme recognition had already been given to the country’s first national hero when the town of Opon was named Lapu-Lapu City in 1961.
“The name of the country’s second busiest airport should not be changed without consulting the people, the organizations, the sectors that not only have a stake in the airport but also contribute, daily, by their patronage of the airport, to Mactan Cebu International Airport’s viability and future,” Garcia said.
“We should hear from the millions of people of the City of Cebu, and the 44 municipalities and six component cities of the Province of Cebu, who, after all, co-own the airport with the people of Lapu-Lapu City.”
“We should hear from the millions of people of the City of Cebu, and the 44 municipalities and six component cities of the Province of Cebu, who, after all, co-own the airport with the people of Lapu-Lapu City, whether the airport, which they have historically, consistently, and endearingly called ‘Mactan’, should be changed at all, and whether we should change it now, as we struggle to pick up the broken pieces of our lives and livelihoods without knowing when this pandemic will end,” he concluded.