SEVERAL senators expressed alarm on the recent power outage disruption at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 insisting the need for a necessary move to improve its facilities and services.

Based on reports, authorities said the NAIA Terminal 3’s main circuit breaker caused the May 1 power outage.

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said it is important that NAIA officials should immediately conduct an audit of all its facilities, including an electrical audit, and make the necessary upgrade.

“Hindi katanggap-tanggap na nangyari na naman ang ganitong insidente ilang buwan lamang makalipas na maparalisa ang ating buong air transport system pagpasok ng bagong taon. We should have learned our lessons from the New Year incident and appropriate redundancy measures should have been put into place to avoid a repeat of such incident.” Gatchalian said.

Gatchalian stressed authorities concerned must double their efforts to avoid similar incidents in the future.

Senator Nancy Binay said the incident was bothersome considering the same problem happened last January 1.

Binay said the January power outage disrupted hundreds of flights that were cancelled, directed and delayed due to a severe power failure that downed the air navigation system of the Civil Aviation Authorities of the Philippines.

“Only a few months after the New Year power outage that crippled aviation and airport operations, we are again in every social media portal, news channel and newspaper across the world. Again, today’s incident pointed to a string of inadequacies that showed how weak, bad and vulnerable our airports are. Sadly, the message that we are actually sending the world: Travelling in the Philippines has become an unpleasant and frustrating experience.” Binay said.

She urged there is a need to look into this incident citing the fact that it happened during holidays and long weekends.

Senator Jose Jinggoy Estrada blamed the NAIA authorities for not doing the proper measures to check and recheck all electrical and power supply connections considering that this incident already happened last January of this year.

“Hindi pa ba tayo nadala? To the concerned aviation and transportation officials, have you not had enough yet? We were in this situation last New Year’s Day and it was even worse. This power outage could have been avoided if the necessary measures are already in place, at least in having an interruptible power supply considering the thinning of power supply this summer season and when demand usually peaks,” Estrada said.

Estrada cited the Senate Committee Report No. 39 which have already identified the absence of redundancy or systems backup as among the critical reasons that led to the airport shutdown last January 1 along with the issue of lack of real maintenance to the airport equipment. That would have been enough for our concerned officials to be on the lookout for situations like what we’re having now in NAIA Terminal 3.

Senator Risa Hontiveros echoed the same view saying this must not be taken for granted considering that our international airport represents the country in the international community.

“Nagka-long holiday lang, aberya nanaman? When we held a senate investigation on disruptions at the NAIA, concerned government agencies assured us major problems like the one we experienced on New Year’s Day won’t happen again. Pangakong napako na naman ang tugtugin. One of the recent operational problems occured on January 1, a holiday. Today is May 1, Labor Day, another holiday. Coincidence lang ba na napupurnada ang lakad ng mga kababayan natin kapag mga araw ng bakasyon? May kaugnayan ba rito ang pinaplanong privatization ng NAIA? O talagang dinededma tayo ng mga pabayang namamahala sa NAIA kaya wala nang tamang pagpaplano para sa mga airport?” Hontiveros lamented.

Hontiveros mo raised concern on several flights of Filipino Overseas Workers whose job might be affected by the recent happenings at NAIA.
Airport authorities apologized for the inconvenience the power failure brought upon its passengers, adding assistance was given and necessary actions were done.

The airport authorities added its engineering team is now working with technical personnel to make the necessary audit and checking of all vulnerabilities. Camille P. Balagtas, PS Jun M. Sarmiento