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Grandma's First Plane Ride: Mrs. Edmunda Torres (right) of Bauan, Batangas, accompanied by relative, prepares to take her first plane ride. She is enroute from the Manila Domestic Airport to visit relatives in Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro where two of her sons and their families settled in 1956.

CIVIL AVIATION HELPS . . .
(Continued from page 36)

modern communications and navigational aid facilities.

These facilities are manned by U.S.-trained Filipino aviation specialists who are now training others at the new U.S. AID-NEC-CAA training center. Experts from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are also assisting both in the training of specialists and in the setting up of a complex air traffic facility.

These improvements have been made to cope with the rising volume of both commercial international and domestic traffic as well as military and private aircraft flights. CAA statistics show that about 400 aircraft take off and land at the MIA daily.

The opening of the new frontiers like Occidental Mindoro can be largely attributed to commercial aircraft. Today, there are two scheduled flights daily to Mamburao from Manila. One passes through Calapan and the other through San Jose.

Mamburao is just one of the 74 national airports in the country today. Ten years ago there were only 53. In 1954, the number of paying passengers was 252,700; in 1964, the number reached 1,536,153 an increase of about 500 percent. About two-thirds of these passengers flew between Manila and the trunkline airports located in Cebu City, Bacolod, Iloilo City in the Visayas; Cagayan de Oro, Davao and Zamboanga in Mindanao and Laoag in northern Luzon. Others flew between secondary airports such as Legaspi, Baguio, Tacloban, Dumaguete, Cotabato and others, and the rural airports all over the country.

Today there are 80 aircraft used for domestic commercial operation, around 30% more than in 1954. And, there are five domestic scheduled airlines compared to one one ten years ago, indicating that air travel is proving its role in the growth of the nation.

At the Manila International Airport, domestic terminal passengers awaiting for their flights represent different professions and occupations. It is a common sight to see a man in dark business suit sitting side by side with a man in simple clothing. Businessmen, farmers, small merchants, students, and wealthy matrons are seen in the same luxurious Fokker plane or in the same versatile DC-3.

In rural airports, farmers lead their produce in cargo aircraft for market in other towns. This is a common sight in Ilocos provinces, in the inlands of Mindanao and in the isolated communities in the Visayas.

Many people today prefer to travel by air, said a regular commuter from Manila to the Visayan Islands, "because of the inconvenience of traveling by sea." Most of the inter-island ships are overcrowded and often delayed in departure and arrival.

Steadily increasing air travel and competition among the several airlines have resulted in fare reduction, bringing air travel within the reach of more and more Filipinos—increasing the temp of development of rural Philippines.