THE Bureau of Immigration (BI) has resumed operations at the Subic Bay International Airport (SBIA) a decade after when international flights stopped at the former US naval base.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente said they returned in Subic on Wednesday, July 7, when a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight, carrying 300 repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Saudi Arabia, landed at the airport.
This event marked the first international flight since 2011, according to the BI chief.
PAL's maiden flight in Subic was scheduled on Monday but the aircraft, which was carrying 309 OFWs and other returning Filipinos from Saudi Arabia, was diverted to Clark International Airport (CRK) due to bad weather.
Morente welcomed the resumption of international flights in Subic.
He said this is an encouraging sign that there is hope that international travel will slowly return to normal after more than a year of Covid-19 pandemic.
Morente assured PAL and other airlines that are planning to mount flights in Subic that BI is always ready to field sufficient number of personnel needed to facilitate the smooth arrival of passengers.
Carlos Capulong, chief of the BI Port Operations Division, said that a team of immigration officers and other personnel assigned in Clark were directed to be on-call for deployment whenever there are flights in Subic.
Capulong added that BI may decide to deploy permanent personnel in Subic if flights will be more frequent in the area.
"As of now, it is only PAL that has informed us of its intention to mount flights in Subic. We were told that this July, there are four flights from Saudi Arabia that will be landing there," he said.
PAL informed BI that it needs to mount flights in Subic to facilitate the repatriation of thousands of OFWs stranded in the Middle East due to the worldwide pandemic.