Departure
87%
vs 95% ▼ 8
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Subic Bay International Airport, on the Cubi Point peninsula within the Subic Bay Freeport Zone near Olongapo City on Luzon, occupies the former US Navy air station of the same name. Its single very long hard runway, a legacy of Cold War-era carrier air operations, makes it a useful diversion field for Manila and Clark, and an interesting destination for simulator pilots keen to fly into a former naval air station turned civil airport.
Subic Bay International Airport sits on the Cubi Point peninsula inside the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, close to Olongapo City in Zambales province on the island of Luzon. Operated by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, it began life as Naval Air Station Cubi Point, a major United States Navy air facility, and today functions as a secondary and diversion airport for Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila and for Clark International Airport in Pampanga. For a simulator pilot, the appeal lies in its unusually long runway, its dramatic setting between the bay and the Zambales Mountains, and its history as one of the largest earthmoving projects of its era.
The airport lies on the Cubi Point peninsula within the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, on the western coast of Luzon near Olongapo City, in Zambales province. It serves the wider area of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone together with the provinces of Bataan and Zambales, and acts as a backup and diversion field for the much busier Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Metro Manila and for Clark International Airport in Pampanga.
The field has a single physical runway, 07/25, aligned east-west. It is 9,281 feet long, has a hard surface, and is lit for night operations. There is no ILS.
Radio services at Subic Bay include Tower on 118.2 MHz, Approach on 119.1 MHz, a Ground Control Approach frequency of 121.8 MHz, an ATIS broadcast on 134.4 MHz, and a further frequency of 121.3 MHz associated with clearance delivery, along with an FSS frequency of 544.75 MHz. There is no ILS at the field, so approaches are flown as visual or non-precision procedures.
The airport occupies the Cubi Point peninsula at the edge of Subic Bay, with the Zambales Mountains rising close by inland, features that were deliberately cut back by US Navy construction battalions to make way for the runway. The bay itself, together with the adjacent former naval pier once used to berth aircraft carriers, provides a clear visual reference for pilots approaching from the west or south.
The site began as Naval Air Station Cubi Point, conceived in 1950 by Admiral Arthur W. Radford as part of a plan to strengthen the US Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. Seabee construction battalions arrived from 1951 and spent five years levelling a mountain and moving some 35 million cubic yards of fill to create a runway nearly two miles long, a project likened in scale to the construction of the Panama Canal. The $100 million air station, with its adjoining pier capable of berthing the Navy's largest carriers, was commissioned on 25 July 1956. Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption buried the base in up to three feet of ash, and after a Philippine Senate vote against ratifying a renewed basing treaty, US forces withdrew in November 1992, handing the facility to the Philippine government. The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority was created to manage the site, with Richard Gordon as its first chairman. Commercial flights began almost immediately, and the airport was redesignated Cubi Point International Airport in February 1993, with President Fidel Ramos landing there in November of that year aboard the delivery flight of Philippine Airlines' first Boeing 747-400. A new runway, built by Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines, was completed in April 1995 in time for the opening of FedEx's AsiaOne hub, and the airport was formally renamed Subic Bay International Airport on 30 September 1996, with a new passenger terminal opened shortly afterwards for the APEC Leaders' Summit. Passenger numbers peaked around the turn of the millennium before declining sharply by 2007, and the FedEx hub itself closed in February 2009 when operations transferred to Guangzhou.
Subic Bay International Airport continues to serve as a diversion and secondary airport for Manila and Clark, and the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority has promoted it as a general aviation hub for corporate business jets in Asia, alongside ambitions for air logistics and aircraft maintenance and overhaul work. Commercial flight schedules, largely dormant for a number of years, saw a brief revival during the COVID-19 pandemic when the field handled repatriation flights, a role that ended in February 2022 as capacity restrictions eased at Manila.
