DAVAO City First District Representative Paolo Duterte, along with two other lawmakers, filed a bill seeking to rename the current name of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) to Paliparang Pandaigdig ng Pilipinas.
In a press release, Duterte, along with House Representatives Lord Allan Jay Velasco (Marinduque), and Eric Go Yap (ACT-CIS) authored House Bill No. 7031, which aims to change the name of NAIA, the international gateway airport of the Philippines.
According to the bill’s authors, "there is a need to identify the same as belonging to the Philippines and not to one person alone."
The authors also said that the proposed name "is a name that clearly represents the whole nation and brings pride to the Filipinos with the use of the national language."
Velasco, meanwhile, said that having a very Filipino name for our international gateway sparks "nationalism in each and every one of us."
He also said that the Filipino language should be the first thing tourists and visitors should see upon landing at the airport, which is an indication that Filipinos are proud of their heritage.
The proposed bill will be filed for first reading where it will be referred to the Committee on Transportation for deliberation.
The current name of NAIA was enacted on December 10, 1987, through Republic Act 6639, which was renamed from then Manila International Airport (MIA) during the administration of then-president Corazon C. Aquino.
Ninoy Aquino was the slain husband of the late President Aquino, who was assassinated on August 21, 1983, on the tarmac of MIA.
However, NAIA had earned its image as one of the worst airports in the world in previous years.
"The Guide to Sleeping in Airports" website, which gathers reviews from travelers around the world, included NAIA in its top 10 surveys since 2012.
However, the airport was delisted in its 2015 survey.
It was also in NAIA that the tanim-bala (planting bullet) scam transpired as arriving passengers were apprehended and arrested for having possessed bullets in their baggage.
Authors of the bill, meanwhile, said renaming the airport is also a way of ridding off its bad image and have a "fresh start."
Meanwhile, an existing change.org petition is lobbying for its name to be reverted to MIA.
The petition created by a certain Roy Domingo has currently 135,076 signatures.