No delays during CAAP maintenance – airlines

MANILA, Philippines — Airlines yesterday recorded no flight disruptions during the maintenance works conducted by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) on its air traffic management system at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Domestic carriers Philippine Airlines (PAL), Cebu Pacific and AirAsia Philippines completed all their scheduled flights from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. when CAAP was supposed to close the local airspace to do maintenance activities.

“All our flights within the 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. maintenance period of May 17 were able to depart and arrive as scheduled,” PAL spokesman Cielo Villaluna said.

During this period, PAL succeeded in receiving Flights PR733 from Bangkok, 2P2836 from Cebu and 2P2808 from Davao. PAL also deployed Flights PR 1809 bound for Davao and PR1809 headed for Cebu at 3:26 a.m. and 3:48 a.m., respectively.

Cebu Pacific spokesman Carmina Romero also said none of Cebu Pacific’s flights were affected by the corrective maintenance.

As such, the airline refrained from circulating a flight advisory to avoid confusing passengers given that trips proceeded as planned.

“Quiet on our end. We decided to no longer come up with a list to avoid confusion if flights were affected. Safe to say, none (of our scheduled services were disrupted),” Romero told The STAR.

AirAsia Philippines spokesman Steve Dailisan told The STAR that the budget carrier logged a 98 percent on-time performance for flights slated during the maintenance period.

Unlike PAL and Cebu Pacific, however, AirAsia Philippines had to cancel flights from Manila to Davao, Cebu and Bacolod and their return trips to make way for the CAAP works.

CAAP was supposed to stop aviation activities in the Philippines for two hours yesterday morning to replace the uninterruptible power supply of its air traffic management system. The agency installed the new UPS within an hour.

CAAP said the maintenance works had little impact on airline and airport activities.

Power was restored as soon as possible so that Philippine airspace was kept open.

CAAP had wanted to shut the local airspace for about six hours, between midnight and 6 a.m., to do the maintenance activities aimed at preventing a repeat of the Jan. 1 and May 1 disruptions that affected the flights of tens of thousands of passengers.

The agency decided to trim the maintenance period to two hours to minimize the impact on trade and travel. – Ralph Edwin Villanueva, Rudy Santos