Who do we crucify?

Who do we crucify? Yes who do we crucify for the weekend aviation disaster at the NAIA? There is now great temptation to pin the fault on someone, but on whom?

The Xiamen airline crash landing should have been a simple problem and something fixed in no more than two hours. It has happened before BUT the big difference is when a similar accident happened many years ago, the NAIA was under the service management of a private company MIESCOR who had for many years invested on specialized airport equipment and experts to deal with exactly that kind of problem. Unfortunately, that company was unceremoniously and without due process kicked out because of petty thievery committed by a handful of baggage handlers.

My source told me that it was all intentionally blown out of proportion because some politician and a business partner had their eyes on the airport contract. Well true enough, MIESCOR lost the contract and whoever got it is clearly not well equipped and trained enough for Rapid Emergency Response.  Will members of Congress have the courage and integrity to thoroughly investigate the matter, especially the competency of the current management provider? It would be interesting to know if someone got the contract only to sub-contract the deal once again?

Many people want to punish the usual suspects, namely the NAIA management. But in fairness they have faced the music and the challenge every time problems cropped up. The current management has actually done so much more to fix the long term and perennially defective air conditioning system at NAIA. They also reduced and actively gone after crooks as well as the laglag bala gang and streamlined airlines and terminal assignments. Even during the recent crisis at NAIA, we all saw how the General Manager was constantly visible and on the ground. But a platoon of mid-level agency officials was no match for an estimated 136,000 passengers who decided to camp out at the four terminals particularly T1 and T3.

Congressman Jess Manalo who sits on the committee on transport pointed out that the government did not have a high level crisis management team to deal with the problem, meaning various departments were not on the ground lending a hand to the NAIA management. He added that Secretary Art Tugade was nowhere to be seen at any of the terminals nor was he in a nearby crisis center to directly manage the situation.  Manalo’s observations are quite important bearing in mind that most evacuation centers have 3 to 5 thousand people to care for not 136,000 passengers. There was clearly a lack of appreciation on how serious the problem was.

Malacañang could have called in Cabinet secretaries concerned so their departments could have lent a hand, namely Tourism, DOH, DOLE, DOTr etc. The problem is, we have long allowed the Manila International Airport to be a separate entity with its own charter, police and way of dealing with situations. But last weekend, the problem was bigger than the “State of NAIA.” What we had was a state of calamity that paralyzed aviation, tourism and affected the economy. Worst of all is that it left us with a feeling that no one was “in-charge,” definitely not the DOTr secretary.

What we also discovered in the aftermath of the Weekend at NAIA was that the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights is worthless! The Civil Aeronautics Board only had four action officers per shift or 12 in total versus 136,000 passengers. To make matters worse, the CAB and passengers remained at the mercy of airline personnel who had control of food and water distribution as well as information. There was a clear effort to keep passengers in a suspended state of anticipation by feeding them inaccurate information, if not false hopes!

How else does one explain the fact that passengers were being told their flights were OK while we in the newsroom knew all too well that the runway would be blocked for several hours. Knowing the statistics on flight arrivals and departures as well as the fact that the runway used for take off and landing of wide-bodied planes was out of commission, a high school student could easily have told airline passengers that it was going to be a 12- to 24-hour delay easy! But instead, flight schedules were being “delayed,” “rescheduled” or pushed back by the hour. In local parlance the airlines simply applied the “Teka-Teka” system keeping everybody on hold.

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In a time when politics in the Philippines has been divided between the “Aquino Yellows” and the “Duterte Reds and Blues” or Marcos versus Aquino, some people have taken notice and questioned why Malacañang decided to combine a holiday commemorating the murder of Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. with an equally important and solemn religious day among Muslims, namely Eid’l Adha or the Feast of Sacrifice.

Was it simply a “practical solution” to combine two holidays into one, or was it a subconscious or deliberate act to put one on top of the other as if to diminish the historical importance of the murder of Ninoy Aquino especially in a time when another Ferdinand Marcos a.k.a Bongbong is nipping at the heels of the current Vice President. Sorry to put out another conspiracy theory, but in the age of relativism and rewriting history for political purposes, one cannot ignore the how combining the holidays both of which are important to Filipinos somehow dilutes the importance and honor each occasion deserves.

Whatever the case maybe, fate and Ninoy Aquino were clearly not to be denied recognition and attention as the country’s focus is now all on the Ninoy Aquino  International Airport after the Xiamen Airline crash landing resulted in the weekend crash of the NAIA as well as Philippine aviation industry.

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