by Ellson Quismorio
A device worth just P10,000 ended up causing P100 million in damages on New Year’s day when the operations of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) was paralyzed by a “trip” within its Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM).
This was learned Tuesday, Jan. 10 during a briefing on the disastrous New Year flight cancellations by the House Committee on Transportation chaired by Antipolo 2nd district Rep. Romeo Acop.
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The meeting was attended by officials of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) and Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), just to name a few.
During the panel briefing, CAAP Director General Manuel Antonio Tamayo pinpointed the cause of the CNS/ATM glitch to one its four circuit breakers.
In the immediate aftermath of the NAIA crisis last Jan. 1, aviation officials blamed something else, especifically the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) of the CNS/ATM for the problem.
Senior Deputy Minority Leader and Northern Samar 1st district Rep. Paul Daza was conducting an interpellation on the resource persons when he suddenly became curious and asked: “The UPS and the circuit breaker, how much did you spend for that?”
“The UPS is P13 million and the circuit breaker is P10,000,” answered CAAP Air Traffic Service Officer-in -Charge (OIC), Engineer Arnold Balucating.
“For a circuit breaker that disrupted, caused P100 million worth at least, and you’re spending how much? Again? P10,000?” said Daza in an incredulous tone. A total of 414 flights were cancelled on Jan. 1, a Sunday.
“And you’re now asking for a budget of P13 billion for a new system? There’s gonna be a lot more questions,” the Visayas solon added.
A resource person in the briefing, CAB Executive Director Carmelo Arcilla, pegged the losses from the airlines at P100 million. But he said the damages suffered by the estimated 65,000 affected passengers were much more worse and hard to calculate.
NAIA’s entire CNS/ATM, which was turned over to CAAP over just five years ago, would cost the government P13 billion to replace.
It was also established during the hearing that on Jan. 5 or four days after the crisis, CAAP sought the purchase of a new UPS–which has a P13-million price tag–under emergency procurement.
Tamayo justified this move by saying that the UPS, which was one of the key components of the CNS/ATM, was already in the middle of its lifespan and thus needed to have “redundancy” in place. He says the new UPS is an “upgraded” version.
This caused 1-Rider Party-list Rep. Ramon Gutierrez to comment in Filipino, “We only suffered a flat tire. Why do we need to buy a new motorcycle?”
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“Forgive this representation for finding it quite alarming that we would categorize it as emergency [purchase]…we did not have to really fast-track the purchase of the UPS and simply focus on the fixing of the circuit breaker,” Gutierrez told Tamayo.
Balucating later told the panel that circuit breakers need to be replaced once they become faulty, since they cannot be “opened and fixed”.
Daza said that CAAP’s takeaway from Jan. 1 should be to improve their maintenence protocols.
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