Heads must roll

The unintended closure of the entire Philippine airspace last January 1 in what can only be due to negligence and inefficiency of the country's air transport officials leaves no other immediate recourse but to move for the removal and prosecution of the guilty parties. This is not a simple case of corruption or smuggling or anything involving people enriching themselves at the expense of government and the taxpaying public.

This involves an actual case of life and death not just for a few people but in numbers too horrifying to contemplate. When the communications facilities of the entire air traffic control system of a country conks out and the backup system follows suit, and in desperation engineers latch on to an outside commercial resource not knowing the voltage requirements do not match, you have a situation that is both disastrous and shameful.

Scores upon scores of flights had to be grounded, affecting thousands upon thousands of passengers at airports all over the country. Inbound international flights had to be cancelled, turned back, or diverted. Every human activity or endeavor that had anything to do with flying that day had to be missed and lost. No business meetings, no product deliveries, no medical appointments, no social engagements.

Nobody has yet put a price tag on the potential and actual losses incurred in that fiasco but I can only surmise it to be staggering. And the great "what if?" is simply too hair-raising even just thinking of what might have happened makes anyone want to puke. It is bad enough that NAIA, already considered one of the worst airports in the world, should be at the center of the fiasco, it is the nail on its coffin to confirm it.

The incident could not have come at a worse time. With global economic woes coming hot on the heels of the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic, having something scuttle our feeble efforts at reviving the economy, largely borne on the back of the tourism industry, gives scant room for hope and optimism. There just seems to be no end to the bad luck when all we need is just a little shot at another chance.

I am not one quick to call for heads to roll. We have all seen how tough it is to be without a job. And as a father, it breaks my heart to have families suddenly without breadwinners. But for God's sake, these people have just had their fat bonuses and cash gifts. Such are supposed to be rewards and incentives for jobs done exceptionally well. Not only were such jobs not done well, they were botched, with lives laid on the line.

I am also not a great believer in congressional investigations. But never in my life have I ever more welcomed such an investigation than when I read the news that a Senate panel is seeking a probe into the incident. Go for it, Your Honors, crack your oversight whips and let the axe fall where it may. Heads must roll. Heads really need to roll. This thing cannot just be swept under the rug. It must be dragged out into the open.

For it is simply unimaginable that a supposed "uninterruptible" system backed by another "uninterruptible" system could conk out one after the other and then so-called "engineers" would be so foolish as to hook up to an outside mismatched system that all but ensured the complete failure of what keeps planes from crashing to the ground or into one another. Think planes flying almost blind, if you will.

Indeed, aside from any congressional inquiry, no less than the president needs to step into the picture. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. cannot just leave the matter to his subordinate Cabinet officials. What happened was a matter of national interest, a national security concern, in fact. He cannot remain playing cute as if his term in office is one long photo op. Shake a leg, Sir, Your Excellency. You have the action genes of your father.