The Philippines Airlines has issued an updated travel guidelines for all inbound passengers going to Bacolod City and Province of Negros Occidental where it required to have an APPROVED S-PASS.
In an advisory posted on its website, PAL provided detailed instructions to ensure passengers will not be barred from boarding.
When applying for an S-PASS, PAL said Bacolod City bound passengers should use the following Brgy. Address and City:
Address: Brgy. Airport
Municipality of Destination: Silay City
This will allow the province to approve the S-PASS of the passenger going to Bacolod City, it said, adding that the province will be handling the verification of the documents at the arrival area of New Bacolod Silay International Airport and will deny entry of passengers without an approved S-PASS.
The Bacolod Emergency Operations Center meanwhile said it has already sought the intervention of the Department of Interior and Local Government regional office in Iloilo City to resolve the conflicting guidelines on the S-PASS requirement.
Despite the 3.5 kilometers distance between the Bacolod City Government Center and the provincial capitol, the city’s Emergency Operations Center said they have to write the DILG in Iloilo for the regional Inter-Agency Task Force to intervene.
While it would only take about 10 minutes drive to reach Capitol or BCGC, up until this writing there was no formal meeting that was initiated between either parties to thresh out the conflicting guidelines.
EOC Executive Director Em Ang said the EOC wants DILG’s intervention on what EO to follow, and to sit down with officials of Bacolod and Negros Occidental. They also wanted to involve the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines in the discussion.
Due to the conflicting guidelines, with Silay Aiport being located within the jurisdiction of the capitol, some airline passengers were forced to book for a new flight after they were disallowed for boarding due to the lack of an approved S-PASS.
The province said the S-PaSS requirement is one of their condition when they allowed airline companies to mount a daily flight between Bacolod and Manila.
While this issue remains unresolved, Councilor Israel Salanga said that his office and the office of Councilor Cindy Rojas will continue to approve the S-PASS application of Bacolod-bound passengers.
