Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Norman Tansingco addressed a recent post on X (formerly Twitter) on immigration queues.
Tansingco clarified that despite the queues, passengers were speedily processed and the area was empty in 40 minutes.
In the post, a netizen complained of long lines morning of February 19 after his flight landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1.
Queues, Tansingco said, is expected as 8 flights carrying almost 1,800 total passengers arrived at the same time period.
“Our immigration officers had to process all these flights that arrived at the same time,” he said.
Among these flights are airplanes carrying high passenger loads such as those coming from Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
He added that all counters were fully manned, and all e-gates deployed were fully functional.
Tansingco said that he has been closely monitoring airport operations, and said that heavy queuing was observed at around 0620H, but arrival area was clear by 0700H.
He shared that arrival and departure formalities for primary inspection of foreign nationals at the NAIA and Mactan-Cebu International Airport are ISO 9001:2015 certified, affirming the BI’s continued observance of internationally-recognized organizational practices and its efforts to provide its clients with quality performance and services that are globally competitive.
