Director of the Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) in Philippines Abdulrahman Al-Abdulwahhab explained that at 16:10 pm Monday the Authority of Manila International Airport announced the closure of the main runway of the airport to conduct unscheduled repairs, and decided to convert most of the coming flights that are about to reach the Manila airport to land at the Clark Airport, which is about 120 km from the capital, Manila. He said that as a result, the Saudia converted the two coming flights from Jeddah (SV870) and Riyadh (SV864) to land at the Clark Airport, so that the flight (SV870) coming from Jeddah to Manila landed at the Clark Airport at 16:35 pm, and then it left it at 1:24 am heading for Manila International Airport and landed at it at 2:15 am PHT. He added that the flight (SV864) coming from Riyadh to Manila landed at the Clark Airport at 19:35 pm, then it left the airport heading to Manila at 2:02 am, and landed at it at 2:42 am PHT. He pointed out that due to the limited operational capabilities of the Clark Airport and the accumulation of flights of different airlines transferred to it from Manila airport, most airlines have not been able to secure moving the passengers on board their flights to the terminal of Clark Airport, so they had to wait until allowing the flights to go to Manila airport after completion of repairs and re-opening to air navigation.
