January 19, 2008 | 12:00am
Someone had to take the blame for the downgrade by the US Federal Aviation Administration of Philippine compliance with international aviation safety standards. So Air Transportation Office chief Daniel Dimagiba was sacked the other day by President Arroyo. Dimagiba would have been the logical choice for kicking out someone for the FAA downgrade, except for one thing: he had been at the post for only a month as officer-in-charge.
As US authorities and Philippine aviation officials have said, the FAA had been pointing out to Manila for years several deficiencies that needed correcting to improve aviation safety. Last year the FAA reviewed the measures taken so far by the Philippines and came out dissatisfied. The government had sufficient warning that the country was ripe for a downgrade by the FAA. Yet transportation officials led by Secretary Leandro Mendoza, whose department has jurisdiction over the ATO, did little that would have prevented the downgrade.
For his labors, Mendoza, one of the President’s most trusted aides, was rewarded with the additional post of acting ATO chief. By now Mendoza should be well-versed on what ails the ATO. In November 2003, former ATO chief Panfilo Villaruel and a Navy officer, Ricardo Gatchalian, took over the control tower of the NAIA Terminal 2 to denounce corruption in the air transportation sector. Mendoza, a former police chief, deployed a Special Weapons and Tactics team that promptly shot dead Villaruel and Gatchalian. Villaruel’s relatives lamented that he was about to surrender following a three-hour negotiation.
If Mendoza’s department had responded with equal speed and decisiveness to the warnings from the FAA, the Philippine downgrade would have been averted. Now he has direct supervision over the ATO, and there are no more OICs who can be kicked out in case something goes wrong. ATO officials had initially tossed the blame to Congress for failure to create a Civil Aviation Authority that would enjoy a bigger budget and fiscal independence from Mendoza’s department. Lawmakers shot back that if the ATO needed more money, all it had to do was ask. Instead the problem was allowed to fester and the FAA warnings were ignored. Now it’s the nation that will bear the consequences of official incompetence and neglect.
