A photograph of luggage trolleys left strewn across the departures area of Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 is making the rounds on Facebook, reigniting a long-running debate about Filipino discipline — and whether the airport’s own design shares the blame.
Johanne Lim, who posted the photo at the NAIA Terminal 3 International Departures area on the evening of May 13, expressed frustration over what he described as travelers quickly undoing what he credited to San Miguel Corporation’s management of the airport. “Sad to see how quickly Filos mess up a perfectly good thing that San Miguel Corporation done to T3,” Lim wrote, adding a plea for fellow Filipinos to practice “pride and discipline even in tidying up after themselves just a bit.”
The post drew hundreds of comments, with reactions divided sharply between those agreeing with Lim and those pointing the finger at airport management rather than passengers.
Several commenters pushed back on the framing. Jon Limjap noted a structural problem that frequent NAIA T3 users would recognize: certain floors of the parking building require travelers to navigate a flight of stairs, making it impossible to bring trolleys all the way to their vehicles. “By the time they’re done [unloading], they’ve forgotten about the cart,” Limjap wrote, calling the situation a “system problem.” Adrian Silan corroborated this, noting that while parking floors LA and LD connect directly to the terminal, floors LB and LC require passengers to take the stairs — an obstacle that effectively forces them to abandon their carts mid-transit.
Kathleen Lopez echoed the sentiment, arguing that the absence of clearly designated trolley return areas and dedicated collection staff makes the disarray almost inevitable. “It’s easy to blame passengers for the mess when there isn’t even a proper designated parking space for the carts,” she wrote.
Others took a lighter approach: one commenter suggested a coin-deposit system for carts — similar to shopping trolleys in some countries — while another jokingly referenced LAX’s USD 9 cart fee as a possible deterrent.
San Miguel Corporation’s New NAIA Infrastructure Corporation (NNIC), which took over management of the airport in September 2024, has deployed 2,500 new trolleys across terminals as part of a broader modernization effort. In its first year, NNIC pledged P72 billion for a five-year overhaul, with P3.5 billion already spent, covering upgrades to baggage systems, passenger processing, and terminal facilities.
Whether the scattered carts represent a passenger behavior problem or a facility design gap — or both — the post has at least prompted a pointed conversation about accountability on both sides of the terminal doors.
