Marcos apologizes for PH airspace shutdown

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on Friday apologized for the hours-long shutdown of the Philippine airspace on New Year's Day.

Marcos said Filipino migrant workers who were affected by the shutdown lost two or three days of their precious vacation time.

"I'm sorry. We have to apologize to our kababayans, especially those who came from abroad,"  Marcos said.

"Kami ay humihingi ng inyong paumanhin at gagawin namin ang lahat upang hindi na maulit ito ," he added.

(We apologize and we will do everything so that there will be no repeat of this incident.)

Marcos on Friday inspected the the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 a day after his arrival from a state visit to Beijing and five days after the airport incident.

Authorities gave Marcos a briefing on what happened at the Philippine Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC), which affected thousands of passengers.

‘Fast-track upgrades’

Marcos also tasked Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista to fast-track the negotiations with suppliers for the upgrades needed for the airport's system.

"Beyond that, is to have a proper backup system so if the whole system fails, as it did on January 1, we have a complete system ready to go," Marcos said.

"That might take a little time but that is something that we will try to fast-track as quickly as possible," he said.

Marcos said the administration was planning for "future redundancies for the system."

"So kung mayroon mangyari ulit na ganito, mayroon tayo kaagad na kapalit. Hindi na tayo aabot ng anim na oras. Siguro mahaba na ‘yung ilang minuto lang," Marcos said.

(If this happens again, we already have a backup plan. We will not need six hours to address the glitch. It should just be a few minutes.)

Marcos said the uninterrupted power supply should really be "uninterrupted."

The UPS problem was said to have started the problems at the airport on Jan. 1.

"It’s extremely important especially during Christmas season at alam naman natin napakarami ng mga Pinoy na lumilipad mula sa abroad at pumupunta sa kani-kanilang mga probinsya (we know many Filipinos fly in from abroad to go their respective provinces)," Marcos said.

UPS failure

The technical problem affected some 56,000 passengers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. At least 282 flights to and from Manila were either canceled, diverted, or delayed.

Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines director general Manuel Tamayo earlier said one of the UPS failed at 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 lunchtime due to over-voltage as 380 volts were coming in instead of 220 volts.

This then affected the very small aperture terminal (VSAT) which also had to be addressed. The system was partially restored at 4 p.m. on Sunday, and normal operations resumed at 5:50 p.m.

Malasakit packs

Marcos said authorities and airport officials addressed the needs of passengers affected by the shutdown.

"We try to support them in every way... We were able to give... [food]  and then the malasakit packs that MIAA has," Marcos said.

He said the most important thing was for the passengers to reach their destinations.

"Right now we can say the system was down for about six and a half hours on January 1 at nakabalik naman kaagad. Ngayon ang pinag-usapan namin para hindi na mangyari ulit," Marcos said.

(Right now we can say the system was down for about six and a half hours on January 1 and they were able to fix it. We discussed measures to ensure that this will not happen again.)

"Mayroong mga pieces of equipment na mukhang nagka-problema, kaya’t nagkaganito, kaya naputulan ng kuryente, kaya nag-down ‘yung buong system," Marcos said.

(Some pieces of equipment encountered problems that cause thing to happen. That's why there was a loss of power, that caused  the system to collapse)

Investigations underway

The Palace earlier said a thorough investigation had been launched over the incident.

The Senate and House of Representatives are set to conduct their respective hearings to look into the incident.

The CAAP has said it is willing to face external investigations over the malfunctioning of the air traffic management system.—AOL/NB, GMA Integrated News