Map - Subic Bay International Airport (Subic Bay International Airport)

Subic Bay International Airport (Subic Bay International Airport)
Subic Bay International Airport (Paliparang Pandaigdig ng Look ng Subic; ) serves as a secondary and diversion airport for Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Metro Manila and Clark International Airport in Pampanga. It also serves the immediate area of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, the provinces of Bataan and Zambales, and the general area of Olongapo in the Philippines.

The airport was known as the Naval Air Station Cubi Point, part of the Subic Naval Base of the United States Navy, before the base closed.

In 1950, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, envisioned a naval base in the Western Pacific to enhance Seventh Fleet capabilities. The Korean War began and the Navy realized it had a need for an air station in the region. Cubi Point in the Philippines was selected, and civilian contractors were initially approached for the project. After seeing the Zambales Mountains and the surrounding jungle, they claimed it could not be done.

The U.S. Navy then turned to the Seabees and was told this would not be a problem. The first Seabees to arrive were surveyors of Construction Battalion Detachment 1802. Mobile Construction Battalion 3 arrived on 2 October 1951 to get the project going and was joined by MCB 5 in November. Over the next five years, MCBs 2, 7, 9, 11 and CBD 1803 also contributed to the effort. They leveled a mountain to make way for a nearly 2 mi runway. NAS Cubi Point turned out to be one of the largest earth-moving projects in the world, equivalent to the construction of the Panama Canal. Seabees there moved 20 e6cuyd of dry fill plus another 15 million that was hydraulic fill.

The $100 million-facility (equivalent to $ million in ) was commissioned on 25 July 1956, and comprised an air station with an adjacent pier capable of docking the Navy's largest carriers. After decades of use by American forces, Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, burying Cubi Point in 18 - 36 in of ash. Despite this, the American government wished to keep the Subic Naval Base and signed a treaty with the Philippine government.

The treaty was not ratified, however, failing by a slim margin in the Philippine Senate. Attempts to negotiate a new treaty were soon abandoned and the United States was informed that it was to withdraw within one year. U.S. forces withdrew in November 1992, turning over the facility with its airport to the Philippine government.

Initially some 8,000 volunteers guarded the facility and prevented looters from damaging the facilities. The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) was created to manage the facility by virtue of Republic Act No. 7227 after intense lobbying of then-Mayor Richard Gordon. He was appointed its first Chairman and Administrator.

Twenty days after the departure of American forces, the airport ushered in its first commercial flight from Taiwan via Makung. In February 1993, NAS Cubi Point was converted to Cubi Point International Airport. To herald its designation as an international airport, President Fidel V. Ramos chose to arrive in November 1993 from an official visit to the United States using the airport. This flight also proved the capabilities of the airport as the President arrived aboard the delivery flight of Philippine Airlines's first Boeing 747-400.

Construction of the present runway by Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines began in 1993 and was completed in April 1995, in time for the inaugural landing of FedEx Express MD-11 and the formal opening of FedEx's AsiaOne hub. The newly renamed Subic Bay International Airport was formally opened on 30 September 1996. The new US$12.6-million passenger terminal built by Summa Kumagai Inc. (a joint Filipino-Japanese venture) was inaugurated on 4 November 1996, in time for the 4th APEC Leaders' Summit.

Between 1992 and 1995 SBIA welcomed a total of around 100,000 commercial passengers. The airport was expected to handle 110,000 passengers in 1996. In 1997, SBIA topped the 100,000 annual passenger count. For the year 1998, the airport handled a total of around 1,000 international and 6,000 domestic flights, and almost 100,000 inbound and outbound passengers. By 2007 the number of recorded passengers had dropped to 17,648, but due to the presence of the FedEx AsiaOne Hub the airport still handled 115,108 flights. 
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Map - Subic Bay International Airport (Subic Bay International Airport)
Country - Philippines
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The Philippines (Pilipinas), officially the Republic of the Philippines (Republika ng Pilipinas), is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It is situated in the western Pacific Ocean and consists of around 7,641 islands that are broadly categorized under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The Philippines is bounded by the South China Sea to the west, the Philippine Sea to the east, and the Celebes Sea to the southwest. It shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Japan to the northeast, Palau to the east and southeast, Indonesia to the south, Malaysia to the southwest, Vietnam to the west, and China to the northwest. The Philippines covers an area of 300,000 km2 and,, it had a population of around 109 million people, making it the world's thirteenth-most-populous country. The Philippines has diverse ethnicities and cultures throughout its islands. Manila is the country's capital, while the largest city is Quezon City; both lie within the urban area of Metro Manila.

Negritos, some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Adoption of animism, Hinduism and Islam established island-kingdoms called Kedatuan, Rajahnates, and Sultanates. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for Spain, marked the beginning of Spanish colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. Spanish settlement through Mexico, beginning in 1565, led to the Philippines becoming ruled by the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. During this time, Catholicism became the dominant religion, and Manila became the western hub of trans-Pacific trade. In 1896, the Philippine Revolution began, which then became entwined with the 1898 Spanish–American War. Spain ceded the territory to the United States, while Filipino revolutionaries declared the First Philippine Republic. The ensuing Philippine–American War ended with the United States establishing control over the territory, which they maintained until the Japanese invasion of the islands during World War II. Following liberation, the Philippines became independent in 1946. Since then, the unitary sovereign state has often had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a decades-long dictatorship by a nonviolent revolution.
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