Salceda seeks compensation for passengers affected by air traffic system outage

The government should compensate the thousands of passengers whose flights were grounded on January 1 and 2 due to an outage of the country's air traffic management system, House ways and means panel chairperson Joey Salceda of Albay said Monday.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines’ (CAAP) Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) malfunctioned on New Year’s Day, an incident that either delayed, cancelled or diverted at least 282 flights.

“I  am asking my friend Secretary [Jaime] Bautista to look into how the CAAP can compensate passengers hassled by these delays. Passengers pay a terminal fee, and airlines pay fees to the CAAP. They failed both sectors, in this case. And there's real financial damage to both passengers and airlines as a result of this failure,” Salceda said.

The compensation could be granted provided that CAAP certify the air traffic management system power issue as a safety reason for flight cancellations, to allow passengers with cancelled flights to be eligible for full reimbursement should they choose to avail of the option, the Albay congressman added.

He cited the Joint Administrative Order (JAO) No. 1 s. 2012 of the Transportation and Trade departments, which states that “in case the air carrier cancels the flight because of force majeure, safety and/or security reasons, as certified by the CAAPs, a passenger shall have the right to be reimbursed for the full value of the fare.”

“This [move should be done by CAAP] because since it is clearly the fault of the government and not of the airlines, many passengers are unable to avail of basic compensation and accommodation packages such as free hotel rooms. The JAO apparently does not have a provision for when it’s clearly the fault of the administrative agencies,” Salceda said.

“[And] so, the least the CAAP can do is certify this event as a safety reason for cancellation, so that the reimbursement mechanism can be set into motion. It’s the least that the DOTr [The Department of Transportation] and the CAAP can do at this point,” Salceda added.

Salceda then estimated a total of P660 million or P10,000 worth of financial remuneration for each of the 66,000 passengers affected, including the 56,000 stranded on Sunday.

“This system-wide issue, which is bad enough as it is and terrible considering the rush to get back to work after the holidays, should never happen again. I don’t think JAO 1 took it into account, either,” Salceda said.

He also underscored that there is a clear need to update or change policies to reflect what passengers are entitled to when the government is at fault, as well as the need to see whether the failure could have been avoided, and whether  the CAAP complied faithfully with State Safety Program for air operations.

“We need to hold people accountable. I mean, I can’t say this is force majeure. You can foresee power outages. You can foresee surges in air traffic. Someone was at fault here,” he said. — BM, GMA Integrated News