A Senate panel will conduct a hearing to probe the disrupted airport operations due to the technical glitch and power outage during New Year’s day, Senator Grace Poe said on Monday, Jan. 2.
Poe, who chairs the Senate committee on public services, said they would give airport authorities time to resume normal flight operations first before the investigation.
"Meralco already released a statement that there was a steady supply of power from their end. The failure then points to CAAP [Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines] and their navigation equipment," she said in a statement.
The Senator emphasized that the issue is a "national security concern" and that thousands of passengers depend on CAAP's efficiency and competence of service.
She added that "transparency" and "accountability" needs to be demanded from the CAAP.
"We will, therefore, conduct a hearing as part of the Senate's oversight function, to determine who is liable, and what we need to do to avoid the malfunction from happening again," Poe said.
The Philippine Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) on Sunday, Jan. 1, halted all flights to and from Manila after experiencing a technical glitch in the Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance for Air traffic Management (CNS/ATM) system due to a power outage.
At least 361 international and domestic flights were either delayed, canceled, or diverted to other regional airports, affecting about 56,000 inbound and outbound passengers.
Partial flight operations with limited passengers resumed at 4:00 pm on the same day.
CAAP spokesperson Eric Apolonio, meanwhile, cited that the CNS/ATM system is already “outdated", hence the glitch happened.
