MANILA, Philippines — Dozens of flights were canceled while others were delayed due to a power outage at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 early yesterday, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said.
At a press briefing, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said a power outage hit NAIA at about 1:05 in the morning.
Bautista said the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) used generator sets to partially supply power to the check-in system, immigration system, final security x-ray, arrival baggage carousel, elevators, escalators, air conditioning and lights.
He said regular power was restored by Meralco at about 8:46 a.m., more than seven hours after the outage.
“Since then, the operations of NAIA commenced using the regular Meralco power,” he said, adding that there were 24 round-trip Cebu Pacific flights that were cancelled while others were delayed.
“No international flights were cancelled, although there were some delayed international flights,” the secretary said.
Low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific had to cancel at least 48 flights with almost 9,400 passengers, while budget carrier AirAsia Philippines had to delay trips of some 4,000 guests.
MIAA general manager Cesar Chiong said the incident affected about 9,000 passengers.
He apologized to the passengers who were inconvenienced by the delays and cancellations.
“On behalf of the MIAA management we really would like to extend our apologies to all the passengers and the affected greeters and everyone who were affected by this power interruption,” Chiong said.
“Basically, it was something that we really wanted to make sure that the impact is minimized and we really would like to thank all our airline operators because they made sure that the impact of the operations of the power interruption is really minimized and in fact it was confined to domestic flights,” he added.
Bautista also said that they discussed with Meralco possible moves to prevent the recurrence of the power outage. “We met with Meralco even before the power was returned. We also had discussions on how to move forward,” he said.
President Marcos has instructed the DOTr chief to restore normal power operations at NAIA Terminal 3 as soon as possible while providing all necessary assistance to affected passengers.
Marcos made the directive while in Washington on a five-day official visit.
Short circuit
Meralco engineer Noel Espiritu said the outage was caused by either faulty wiring or short circuit. This resulted in a high amount of power current and fault indicator. They are still looking into the cause of the power interruption.
“The abnormalities in the circuit breaker were sensed by the fault indicator; there was a high amount of current. We knew where to trouble shoot, but as of now we are looking into the exact cause of the faulty current,” Espiritu said.
The MIAA will also conduct a full electrical audit at terminals, the secretary said, to avoid future power interruptions and passenger inconveniences.
Necessary budget and procurement activities will also be conducted, Bautista added.
Accountability
Senators vowed yesterday to exact accountability over the latest embarrassing power outage as the DOTr and MIAA apparently have not taken steps to prevent a repeat of the New Year’s Day shutdown of the country’s air space.
Sen. Grace Poe, who chairs the Senate public services committee, said it appears the DOTr and the MIAA “have not learned their lessons” from previous fiascoes.
“The incident shows another disruptive failure of the airport systems causing grave inconvenience to travelers,” Poe said, adding that it was unacceptable that the whole airport – and transportation – is crippled whenever there are power outages.
Sen. Nancy Binay lamented that only a few months after the shutdown of the country’s air space due to a power glitch in a facility run by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, “we are again in every social media portal, news channel and newspapers across the world.”
“Again, today’s incident pointed to a string of inadequacies that showed how weak, bad and vulnerable our airports are,” Binay said. “Our gateway to the Philippines has literally become a port of inconvenience to travelers and tourists.”
Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva noted that after the committee investigated the New Year’s Day incident, officials promised major improvements to services.
Villanueva said during the probe, he bared that there have been power outages that airports have not reported. “We definitely will exact accountability from concerned government authorities with what’s happening,” he told reporters. – Elijah Felice Rosales, Rudy Santos, Helen Flores, Paolo Romero, Cecille Suerte Felipe