Senators wonder if airport authorities learned anything from last NAIA mess
MANILA, Philippines — Yet another power outage leading to flight cancellations at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport is a disappointing development that suggests airport authorities have not been doing their jobs, Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva said Monday.
The Manila International Airport Authority on Monday morning confirmed that a power outage at NAIA's Terminal 3 early Monday morning had led to reduced operations and would lead to flight delays. Cebu Pacific has since announced the cancellation of dozens of flights while Air Asia Philippines said international and domestic flights had had to be rescheduled.
"Unfortunately, we are starting to sound like a broken record when we say that the steps being taken to improve our airport and our Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines are disappointing," he said in Filipino. "Again, we want to get a clear explanation from them."
Sen. Grace Poe, chair of the public services committee, said in March after hearings that a power outage on January 1 that left Philippine airspace devoid of any flights for a few hours on New Year's Day was attributable to inaction and lack of foresight by CAAP and the Department of Transportation.
"Definitely, we cannot let the concerned government authorities escape accountability for this," Villanueva said Monday, adding also that it is too early to say if more Senate hearings should be held.
Poe, in a separate statement, called the outage "a disruptive failure of the airport systems causing grave inconvenience to travelers," adding that a repeat of the New Year's Day outage suggested that DOTr and airport authorities had not learned from the earlier fiasco.
In a briefing, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said that the department has sought help from the National Intelligence Coordinatinmg Agency in investigating the outage.
Lack of airconditioning makse ordeal worse
In her statement, Poe said "the lack of functioning air conditioners in several parts of the airport is not only troublesome but could even be precarious to health especially of the elderly." Reorts from NAIA have shown crowding at the airport as disgruntled travelers struggled to get answers from airline ground staff.
MIAA said Monday that its operations personnel are going around Terminal 3 to provide assistance and to answer inquiries on the power outage and on flights.
In an update on Monday afternoon, Meralco said that power had been restored to Terminal 3.
"Initial inspection of the loadside facility pointed to a main circuit breaker problem of the airport terminal," the statement read.
The Department of Energy earlier told Philstar.com that following its initial assessment, the disruption was "internal" to NAIA Terminal 3, saying that there was no problem found from Meralco’s supply.
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