The Summary
Manila’s primary international hub, NAIA, had reached its absolute limit, forcing a major infrastructure alternative to be considered.
To address the bottleneck, SMC leveraged a massive $15BN capital investment via its infrastructure arm, securing a 50-year Build-Operate-Transfer greenfield approval.
Concerns were raised about subsidence in the region, leading experts to conclude the airport could be underwater by 2050.
Just 20 kilometers north of Manila, a 15-billion dollar mega-airport is rising directly out of the sea - but there’s a problem. The entire thing is sinking rapidly.
Despite predictions that the site could be underwater by 2050, developers of the New Manila International Airport are racing to complete its four parallel runways and 100-million-passenger terminal.
But the entity gambling money to build this isn’t a national government like usual. Instead, it’s being entirely bankrolled by SMC, a private conglomerate historically famous for brewing beer.
So why build an airport on sinking land? And more importantly, can infinite corporate capital actually out-engineer the ocean, or is this destined to be the most expensive infrastructure failure in modern history?
In this edition of The Airside Briefing, I’ll go into my extensive behind-the-scenes research into the rapidly sinking coastline, and what SMC could do about it.