MIAA: Airline ops expected to normalize Jan. 5 after airspace outage
MANILA, Philippines (Updated Jan. 3, 7:29 a.m.) — It may take till Thursday, January 5 for airline operations to normalize following a supposed power outage at Manila’s Air Traffic Management Center that took the country’s airspace offline on New Year’s Day, affecting over 56,000 passengers.
Manila International Airport Authority General Manager Cesar Chiong gave this estimate on ABS-CBN News Channel’s “Rundown” on Monday, January 2 based on their experience from the last typhoon that affected airport operations.
Chiong added that full operations at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, which is the country’s busiest gateway, have not yet resumed as it is only accepting 15 arrivals per hour, compared to 20 arrivals per hour before the catastrophic outage on Sunday.
“There are about 20 flights that are still affected or have been canceled already by some airlines due to some operational requirements. But we’re working with the different airlines so they can actually upgrade some of the flights to a much higher capacity aircraft so that a lot of the passengers can be accommodated,” Chiong said.
The air traffic system, or the Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM), operated by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines conked out Sunday over what airport officials initially attributed to “technical issues” but later on blamed on an internal power outage.
CAAP Director General Antonio Tamayo said in a news briefing Sunday evening that the main uninterruptible power supply of the CNS/ATM failed at around 9:49 a.m. after its cooling blower conked out.
A backup UPS should have kicked in, but Tamayo said “for some reason” it also failed to function.
This prompted CAAP engineers to connect to the commercial line instead, but this supposedly led to more equipment failing as the commercial line supplied power at 380 volts, when the system can only handle 220 volts.
Airport officials said the CNS/ATM currently in use was first procured in 2010 but was only completed in 2018. It is not clear why it took so long for the system to be installed.
Following the New Year’s Day nightmare for travelers to and from the Philippines, transport officials are pushing for an upgrade to what they called an “outdated” air traffic system, but this would cost the government a “huge amount of money.”
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Editor's note: A previous version of this story reported that the system can only handle 280 volts. This has since been corrected.
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