Davao airport lacks radar, modern landing equipment

DAVAO CITY -- As investigators piece together the final moments of Air Philippines Flight 541, some officials at the Davao International Airport say there was nothing wrong with the airplane.

According to them, the trouble was with the airport.

One airport source who asked not be to identified told The STAR yesterday that Flight 541 was an accident waiting to happen because Davao International Airport does not have radar and other electronic equipment that are standard in international airports.

What happened to the twin-engined Boeing 737-200, he said, could happen to any other aircraft landing at Davao airport.

"We knew all along that it would happen. What happened to Air Philippines Flight 541 last Wednesday was something we expected because the airport here does not have the necessary landing equipment," an employee of the Air Transportation Office said.

"What we have here is an air traffic control system that is more 'conventional' or, rather, 'manual.' Mostly, we only rely on the reports of the pilots," he said.

Lacking radar, the control tower instead uses a Very High Frequency Omni-Directional Range (VOR) beacon and Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), he said. These equipment rely on visibility.

Radar helps air traffic controllers on the ground see exactly how many planes are in the air, how far they are from each other, where they are coming from and where they are heading. Radar is used in preventing air collisions.

"Although we also have the landing lights or the Visual Precision Approach Path, these equipment are not enough and they cannot be used especially during adverse weather conditions where we have problems with visibility," the ATO source said.

If visibility is a problem, he explained, a plane could still land if an airport has an Instrument Landing System (ILS), another vital airport equipment which Davao International Airport does not have.

The ILS electronically guides pilots via computers, helping them land their planes even if they can't see the runway.

"So, even if we have zero visibility, we can still be assured of a safe landing if we have an ILS. Right now, we only use the visual flight rules (VFR) most of the time, but these are suspended especially when there are problems with visibility," he said.

Davao air controllers reportedly have only a visibility of seven kilometers on a clear day.

An ILS reportedly installed at Davao airport in 1997 was actually out of order, reportedly pulled out from an airport in Malaysia or Indonesia.

"That ILS was never functional nor operational when it was installed three years ago. It was installed as a part of the Philippine Aid Plan through the United States Agency for International Development," the ATO source said. It was reportedly installed at a cost of several million pesos through a USAID grant.

The lack of a parallel runway, according to the ATO source, also probably contributed to the Flight 541 crash.

"If we have a parallel runway, then it could be easy for a large aircraft to manuever their safe landing. So, what happens is, planes have to wait for tower clearance for them to land which usually has a time gap of a least 10 minutes," he said.

Shortly before crashing on nearby Samal island, Flight 541's pilot was forced to abort his landing upon seeing a Philippine Airlines jet on the runway.

The source also lamented the lack of even very basic communication facilities for aviation officers at Davao airport.

"We do not even have hand-held radios or even cellular phones that we can use during emergencies such as Wednesday's crash," he said.