Welcome back to China

I wish I could say it's great to be back home. But all the bad news that greeted us over the weekend made me sad for our country. And we thought politics took a backseat as people focused on recovery and rehabilitation of typhoon and earthquake devastated areas in our country.

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We arrived last Saturday night from a week-long trip in China, along with a select group of Philippine media editors, publishers and opinion writers invited by the Jinan University School of Journalism and International Relations in Guangzhou City. We left Manila a few hours after Uwan exited the Philippine area of responsibility. It was a smooth two-hour flight to the capital city of the Guangdong province.

We were so elated, especially upon seeing and experiencing the great improvements done at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3. From the gates all the way to the comfort rooms of the terminal, they now have five-star hotel quality amenities like automatic flushers, lots of tissue and paper towel rolls and liquid soap dispensers. These were far cry from my last travel abroad in February this year. Thus, the NAIA earned its well-deserved global customer experience accreditation from the Airports Council International (ACI).

Such recognition was earned a year after the consortium of San Miguel Corp. (SMC) and Incheon International Airport Corp. took over airport operations of the four NAIA passenger terminals. SMC president and chief executive officer Ramon S. Ang steers the management of the New NAIA Infra Corp. (NNIC) that won the bidding for this public-private partnership project in September 2024.