I've only been to this airport one time but it is something that will stick to me forever. When you go to some extremely poor country you kind of expect it to be bad but the thing with the consistent winner of "worst airport in the word" is that they make a huge amount of money off of tourism and one would think that improvements of the one major blemish would be addressed and improved, but for whatever reason that is not the case at NAIA or as The Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manilla, Philippines.
I have only been to this airport once and it was over a decade ago but a friend of mine only recently returned to Mexico after a long trip to South East Asia and he regaled me of tales of NAIA and I was just shaking my head and agreeing that this is exactly what I experienced when I was there.
Now, I mean no offense to any Filipinos out there but Manila isn't exactly a city with a fantastic reputation just in general but with the airport being smack dab in the middle of a very busy part of town, we are off to a bad start for anyone that needs to get in and out of the country.
I don't know when it was built but it must have been before the times when cities generally started to figure out that building an airport outside of the busy part of the city is better. This is not specific to the Philippines, a lot of airports all over the world have made this terrible mistake and once it becomes apparent it is probably too late do to anything about it. When I visit a city that has their airport well out of town I think to myself "these people get it." Having it in the city center is just the beginning of the problems here at NAIA though.
This airport desperately needs expansion but it doesn't appear as though this is possible. I think the only real solution would be to get to work on building a completely different one and just starting over, even if it takes 10 years to finish it, at least that would be something to look forward to.
There are so many problems here that if you can think of it, they are doing it poorly here. From very long queues with nowhere to really put anyone else, to internet being extremely slow, to sanitation just seeming to be non existent as far as bathroom cleanliness is concerned. It's a pretty miserable experience that will have you excited to finally get through whatever it is that you are doing there. While this is only a gut feeling on my part, I think that taxi drivers are easily able to rip people off here because as it was the case for me, by the time I got outside and done with going through all of the long waits that this airport had in store for me (and my friend who was just here) I was willing to pay basically anything that it costs to just get me the hell out of there.
Flights are so frequently delayed due to lack of runways that it is simply expected that your flight is not going to take off or land on time here. So if you are ever heading that way just build that into your time frame, a couple of hours should suffice. This likely hasn't been improved because there is no more space and this is not a hub to nearly anywhere due to the Philippines rather remote location in the world.
While it routinely "wins" the worst airport in the world award, it is important to note that only international airports that have a certain amount of traffic are considered in the runnings. For example, the Kathmandu International Airport is considerably worse than NAIA but they don't have nearly as many people traveling there and therefore it is not considered.
A reasonably reliable judge of airport quality is "Compare the Market" and they rated NAIA 0.24 out of 10 in terms of overall quality and service.
When I was there I kind of felt bad for the staff because they really were trying to be as pleasant as possible but it seems as though everyone in the airport was in a foul mood because the airport itself is just significantly inadequate for what is being asked of it.
I have never been to any Immigration checkpoint in any airport in the world that would be considered "nice" but this one seems like it was designed in the 70's and never received an update in all that time.
My advice to people that are considering going to the Philippines would be to do so anyway but to prepare for the entire time you are going to spend at NAIA to take 3 times as long as you think it should. Take a deep breath and just accept the fact that getting upset is not going to make anything move faster.
now here is something else to consider. Even though I feel as though this airport is really really bad. I do not agree with it being the worst as is rated by many different outlets but the reason for that is because you are almost certainly not going to have a connecting flight here. There is nowhere else to go and this is almost certainly your final destination or the start of your journey, should you ever find yourself in it... I suppose this is a good thing because if you did have a connecting flight you would almost certainly miss it.
In airports that are transfer hubs such as loads of places in USA, Europe, and Asia I think the experience at those especially in NYC and Los Angeles are a much worse experience than you will have in Manila. At least in Manila the people working there at least TRY To be friendly... there is just nothing that anyone can do to speed the process up.