MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives transportation panel is holding an inquiry Tuesday, January 10, into the technical failure that effectively took the entire country’s airspace offline on New Year’s Day, affecting at least 56,000 passengers.
Hundreds of flights had to be diverted or grounded over what airport officials initially called “technical issues,” but later on blamed on an internal power outage of the Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM).
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Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines Director General Antonio Tamayo had said 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 he said “for some reason” it also failed to function.
He said 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.
President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. has apologized over the mishap and vowed that the government is “doing everything” to ensure that this will not happen again.
Among the measures that the government has taken, Marcos said, is the emergency procurement of two UPS units. He added that they are planning to install backups for the system, although he admitted that this may take a “little time” but will be fast-tracked.
Watch the House hearing into the airspace outage LIVE, at 10 a.m on Tuesday, Sept.10, 2022.