The door to direct flights from Asia to Tinian may rest on a defunct departure terminal\u2019s repair and the required presence of security and processing personnel, according to Commonwealth Ports Authority\u2019s acting executive director Ed Mendiola yesterday.<\/p>\n
Right now, Mendiola said, the lack of Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration personnel, as well as an inoperable departure terminal are the \u201cmain challenges\u201d to direct international flights for Tinian.<\/p>\n
\u201cCBP and TSA are not there yet. Processing of international passengers will not be possible until such time,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
One airline from China did express an interest in direct flights to the island but it \u201cnever materialized,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Which would come first, the security or the jet planes? That would be on the initiative of an interested party to inform these agencies of their intention to fly to Tinian, Mendiola said. <\/p>\n
\u201c[CPA] has no part in that. We just provide the facility, and they do their thing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Tinian\u2019s departure terminal, whose renovation has been ongoing since 2009, has never been in use, according to Mendiola. Its construction started in 2005.<\/p>\n
Once that project is completed, he said, CPA should be in better shape to accommodate international flights to Tinian.<\/p>\n
Right now, he said, the existing Tinian runway is \u201cmore than adequate\u201d for direct flights.<\/p>\n
Joe Mendiola, Tinian\u2019s airport manager, said that CPA\u2019s engineering division has already selected a contractor to renovate Tinian\u2019s terminal but no notice-to-proceed has been given yet.<\/p>\n
Wendi Prater, CPA\u2019s executive assistant for its engineering division, is off-island and could not be reached for comment as of press time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The door to direct flights from Asia to Tinian may rest on a defunct departure…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[171,408,124,186],"class_list":["post-184826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-asia","tag-border-protection","tag-cpa","tag-initiative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}