Philippine airspace to shut down for 6-hour maintenance

MANILA, Philippines — The entire Philippine airspace will be shut down on May 17th for about six hours for maintenance of the uninterrupted power supply (UPS) of the country’s air traffic management system, officials said yesterday.

At a press briefing yesterday, Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) senior assistant general manager Bryan Co said the closure on May 17 will be from midnight to 6 in the morning.

“For May 17, it is the entire Philippine airspace that will be shut down because of the scheduled maintenance or replacement of the UPS of the CNS/ATM for our air traffic management center,” Co said, referring to the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management.

He urged the airlines to inform passengers early. “The earlier the airlines can advise the passenger, because of the planned changes in the itinerary. What will happen there is for six hours, there will be no activity in our airspace,” he added.

Co said the maintenance’s hours may be shorter than six hours, but they planned for the full six hours. He added that they chose those hours since it is when airport operations will have the “least disruptions.” The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) yesterday also issued a public advisory, saying a maintenance activity will be conducted at the air traffic management center today, May 3, and on the 17th.

“The corrective maintenance activity is necessary to repair the Automatic Voltage Regulator, replace the UPS and upgrade the ATMS A/B power supply,” it said.

“The ATMS power supply upgrade will involve the installation of a bypass panel to provide seamless ATMS operation and the reconfiguration of the existing distribution panel to segregate ATM system A (voice) and ATM system B (data), resulting with the UPS and AVR serving as each other’s backup in case the other power supply encounters a problem,” it added.

Today, operations at the ATMC was suspended from 2 until 4 in the morning.

The CAAP added that the maintenance activity will affect flights at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Clark International Airport and Mactan-Cebu International Airport, as well as several flights at the other 42 CAAP commercially operated airports. – Rudy Santos