Meralco apologizes for NAIA outage

MANILA, Philippines — The Manila Electric Co. has apologized for the June 9 power interruption at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA-3) caused by a personnel of wholly owned Meralco subsidiary MServ.

“We would like to apologize for the inconvenience the power interruption last Friday caused,” Meralco spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga said in a statement yesterday.

“We also assure the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), the Department of Transportation and the commuting public that measures are being undertaken to prevent a similar incident from happening again,” he said.

Zaldarriaga explained that MServ, in the presence of MIAA personnel, was conducting testing activities of NAIA-3’s electrical facilities when the brief power outage occurred last Friday.

He said Meralco’s wholly owned subsidiary is doing the activity as part of the comprehensive technical audit aimed at improving NAIA-3’s electrical system following the outage that hit the airport terminal last May 1.

According to an incident report submitted to airport authorities, an MServ personnel accidentally left grounding conductors attached to an electrical equipment during a testing activity.

This triggered an electrical fault at 12:50 p.m. that subsequently caused the power interruption of NAIA-3’s facilities on June 9.

Zaldarriaga said the affected facilities were immediately isolated and power was restored at 1:29 p.m. of the same day.

The company also dispatched crew on site to assist MServ and MIAA.

Zaldarriaga said specific recommendations to ensure smoother conduct of succeeding audit and testing activities of NAIA-3’s facilities have been submitted as part of the report submitted to airport authorities.

These include, among others, the strict implementation of a toolbox meeting among MIAA, MServ and Meralco prior to any activity and the conduct of a thorough joint inspection of work area prior to the energization of facilities being tested.

“We remain committed to working with the government in its transportation infrastructure development efforts,” Zaldarriaga said.