Airports interrupted

The first day ever of the new year 2023 in our country literally started with a blast. It was a blast of the past deficiencies and inefficiencies paralyzed air traffic in the Philippines. An alleged equipment failure of the Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) conked out on early morning of New Year’s day following alleged power outage.

Consequently, air traffic communications, radio, radar and internet communications at the NAIA went down and out. Before chaos could break loose up in the skies, all inbound and outbound flights and overflights within the Philippine airspace were suspended on Sunday morning.

The NAIA blunder, however, affected the rest of airports around the country when they accommodated several diverted flights. The outbound flights were either re-booked or suspended until further notices from airlines affected. Some of the inbound flights were able to land without any incident when NAIA operations partially resumed later that day. Although delayed by several hours, it was better to travel safe than be sorry.

Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) general manager Cesar Chiong who is in charge of the NAIA operations earlier assuaged the public that the flight operations in all terminals are expected to be fully normalized either by today or by tomorrow at the latest. According to him, they swiftly began efforts to return to normalcy of NAIA operation later that day. But damage has been inflicted already. It ranged from unquantifiable amount of economic opportunities and man-hours lost to airline and other aviation costs.

The Christmas holiday season, however, ended in nightmare for the many travellers and passengers affected by this epic failure of the ATMC system. The ATMC is operated by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) as the government agency that regulates and supervises the operations of the NAIA and the 43 other international and domestic commercial airports all around the country. As of yesterday, the NAIA and 27 airports affected are reportedly back to near normal operations.

The incident took place two days before President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. flew to Beijing for his state visit to China. Instead at NAIA, the departure rites for the President and his party were held again at the Maharlika Lounge at the nearby Villamor Airbase in Pasay City. Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime Bautista and National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos joined the send off party after both of them earlier yesterday started the inter-agency investigation now looking into this equipment failure at CAAP.

As the immediate boss of the CAAP, the MIAA, NAIA, and other State-run airports all over the country, the DOTr Secretary himself has a lot of explaining to do. Bautista though merely inherited the problems left behind by his predecessors who messed things up by the time he took office six months ago. The soft-spoken Bautista needs to talk tough and breathe down on the necks of his people manning these sensitive offices and equipment that have national security marked all over the places.

Normally, CAAP issues a general notice to airmen (NOTAM) if there is any severe thunderstorm/lightning, runway traffic congestion, or any other possible clear and present danger to flight safety. But the bigger mystery was the alleged power outage that the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) vehemently refuted.

On that fateful day, it was like a simultaneous combustion of all things that could go wrong.

In the “Laging Handa” public service program aired daily by the state-run PTV-4, Eduardo Diaz, deputy director-general for operations of CAAP sought to clarify yesterday the ATMC has two units of uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This was obviously to belie criticisms that the CAAP has no back-up or standby power supply as redundancies that should automatically kick in if there is any power outage or electricity disruption.

If indeed there were two UPS, what happened on that day? This and many other technical questions should come out in the ongoing investigations spearheaded by the DOTr Secretary. Bautista, however, is lucky that the Commission on Appointments (CA) has already confirmed his Cabinet post nomination. Surely, the joint congressional body of CA would have withheld confirmation of Bautista and make him accountable to this glitch-stricken foul up at NAIA.

It was like a series of unfortunate events (borrowing this Hollywood movie title) that got the hackles of our lawmakers who have already set aside in the past Congress P13 billion budget for the upgrade of CAAP equipment etc. The Senate committee on public service chaired by Sen.Grace Poe and Rep.Romeo Acop who chairs the House committee on transportations announced their respective plans to look into this messed up situation that now faces the DOTr Secretary.

While the 19th Congress is still on holiday vacation, the Senate and the House of Representatives are empowered to conduct public hearing even during their legislative recess.

The ensuing domino effects cascaded harder to hundreds of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Many of them going back to their respective jobs abroad were caught in these cancelled and rebooked flights. And the worst part of this goes to our country’s travel industry that is just beginning to recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Tourism Congress of the Philippines (TCP) best reflected the dismay of thousands of people in the closure of the country’s airspace that led to cancelation of nearly 300 flights and about 56,000 passengers travelling on New Year’s day. TCP president Jojo Clemente echoed the valid questions: “Is it going to happen again? How often will it happen if it continues to be a problem?” Answering his own rhetorical question: “What we also saw is that the airport, the airlines, and even us in tourism, we’re not ready.”

Yet, it was just a case of supposed power outage – that never was – but it got our country’s airports interrupted.