The Cebu Pacific Air has announced that it would resume its regular flights to and from Ormoc City beginning July 14.
The airline, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Cebgo, resumes regular flights daily between Cebu and Ormoc, with the Cebu-Ormoc flight departing at 6:35 a.m. and the return flight leaving Ormoc at 7:40 a.m.
Cebgo resumed operations following a risk assessment at the Ormoc Airport, in cooperation with the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit the province of Leyte last July 6.
Cebu Pacific has extended its gratitude to CAAP for the expedient action to get the Ormoc Airport back to operational status as soon as possible.
Aviation authority officials said the Ormoc Airport resumed commercial operations on July 8 after they declared that the runway was usable and safe for aircraft flight operations.
The resumption came two days after it was hit by the tremor damaging both ends of runway 36 and 18.
CAAP chief information officer and spokesman Eric Apolonio said the Ormoc airport is back to normal, as all turbo aircraft now can land and take off after the Department of Transportation completed its inspection and repair.
He added that the terminal was opened after the repainting of displaced threshold markings to warn aircraft of the damaged portions of the runway.
Coring test on the runway and sub surface soil exploration survey was conducted by a technical team from CAAP and DOTr.
Reports said the strong shaking caused cracks in some buildings and roads in the city and power was automatically shut off.
Apolonio also said right after the earthquake, CAAP airport manager VIII Danilo Abareta reported immediately to the main headquarters that engineers are inspecting the cracks in both ends of the runway.
Abareta, in his initial assessment report to CAAP Operations Rescue and Coordinating Center, said the Calbayog, Catarman and Tacloban airports, which are operating regular commercial flights, are in normal condition.
Other airport facilities being supervised by CAAP Vlll in Leyte are Biliran, Borongan, Catbalogan, Guiuan, Hilongos and Maasin.
