Barrie C. Toves, who chairs the airport facilities committee of the Commonwealth Ports Authority board, has urged the CPA management to assist a San Francisco, California-based airline company with its plan to operate on Rota.<\/p>\n
Toves said that Rota was left to suffer when Cape Air pulled out of the CNMI, and that the air service that Star Marianas Airlines currently provides is not enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very problematic for the traveling public coming from Rota,\u201d said Toves during a special meeting held Friday at the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting classroom of the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport. <\/p>\n
Toves asked CPA executive director Christopher S. Tenorio and deputy executive director Edward Mendiola to work on making this airline\u2019s plan to operate on Rota a reality \u201cfor the sake of the island of Rota and its economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toves, who is representing Rota on the CPA board, did not disclose the name of the interested airline company.<\/p>\n
Last June, Toves disclosed that representatives of a \u201cU.S. flag airline\u201d did a fact-finding mission in the CNMI in May and expressed a commitment to return and provide interisland services.<\/p>\n
Toves hinted that this airline is affiliated with United Air and possibly American Airlines too.<\/p>\n
He said this airline wants to build a maintenance hangar on Saipan for their aircrafts so they can provide interisland services between Saipan and Tinian, and between Saipan and Rota and Guam.<\/p>\n
At last Friday\u2019s CPA board\u2019s special meeting, Toves said that the CNMI was faced with major calamities in the last two years of the terms of Tenorio and Mendiola.<\/p>\n
On the seaport side, the director said, Rota encountered major damage from Typhoon Mangkhut, which stopped the operation of the Rota seaport for a couple of months. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt adversely affected the economy of Rota and the livelihood of the people,\u201d Toves said.<\/p>\n
Toves asked Tenorio and Mendiola to work with Department of Lands and Natural Resources Secretary Antonio Benavente, since DLNR is building a small marina on Rota. Toves said DLNR gave CPA half of that facility.<\/p>\n
He asked Tenorio and Mendiola to work with DLNR in order to begin construction of the marina for small boats that will address the problem when there is a calamity.<\/p>\n
The director said if the main port is closed for whatever reason, the small boats will have a place to come in. He said these small boats will no longer be chased out of west and east harbors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of Rota will appreciate that. If you accomplish that, I will give you guys my utmost appreciation at the end of the day,\u201d Toves told Tenorio and Mendiola.<\/p>\n
Toves also disclosed that there are a couple of interested investors that are asking about the seaport and airport facilities on Rota.<\/p>\n
He said he wants to see the request for proposals project for the concession program for Rota to push through. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working on this and there seems to be a snag,\u201d the director said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barrie C. Toves, who chairs the airport facilities committee of the Commonwealth Ports Authority board,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-314609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314609","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}