ADVERTISEMENT
Pangilinan offers to assist gov't in redundancies for air traffic management system
PLDT Inc. Chairman Manuel Pangilinan, who was among the thousands of air travelers affected by Sunday's outage of the Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC), on Monday offered to colocate backup systems in the group’s data centers.
Pangilinan said the group would “be happy to participate” in the collocation of the second or even third redundancies in its nationwide data centers, as well as provide the required connectivities and redundant power supply protection.
This comes a day after the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) recorded a technical issue at the ATMC,
affecting some 56,000 passengers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.At least 282 flights were canceled, diverted, or delayed, including Pangilinan’s flight from Tokyo to Manila, which had to return to Haneda Airport more than halfway through the trip.
CAAP Director General Manuel Tamayo said one of the uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) failed at around 9:50 a.m. on Sunday, and troubleshooting activities had to be done. Backup systems were not immediately available.
Once the system was reconnected to the power supply, however, warnings were released at around lunch time due to over voltage as 380 volts were coming in instead of 220 volts.
ADVERTISEMENT
This then affected the very small aperture terminal (VSAT), which also had to be addressed. The system was partially restored 4 p.m. on Sunday, and operations have since resumed.
Transport officials have since called for upgrades of the system, including the establishment of a backup system located elsewhere.
“We really need to have a backup system na sana located in a different location. Hindi ‘yung malapit dito sa area where we have the existing system,” Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said Sunday evening.
“Of course we will need to have a budget for this so pag-aralan natin ‘to. We will do a feasibility study and present this to NEDA kasi napakaimportanteng system ito na dapat mayroon ang aviation sector ng Pilipinas,” he added.
(We really need to have a backup that is hopefully in a different location, not one nearby the area where we have the existing system. Of course we will need to have a budget for this so let us study. We will do a feasibility study and present this to NEDA because this is a very important system that the Philippine aviation sector needs.)
A number of flights, however, remained canceled on Monday, January 2, still due to the technical issue which hit the ATMC. —Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/KBK, GMA Integrated News