Airport mess

People travel for different reasons. Traveling is costly, so the average person still has to save some money to go to other places.

And because Filipinos generally wish to be with their families on occasions like Christmas and New Year, they are ready to spend their hard-earned money for that purpose. There is usually little left for pocket money. That is why getting stranded or having a flight canceled becomes a nightmare.

With nothing left in their pocket for food, the stress can be unimaginable, especially if they are traveling with their family or loved ones. You will pray with all your heart that whatever caused the delay will be solved fast or at that very moment. But that is not always the case.

Other reasons people travel may also include business. This is particularly true for countless entrepreneurs who believe that time is money. Not being able to be in the place for business transactions will mean lost financial opportunities for them, sometimes in the millions of pesos.

This was what exactly happened to Philippine flights on January 1, 2023 to the shock and dismay of 56,000 passengers and millions of concerned Filipinos. Gilihian g’yud.

So what went wrong? A power supply problem at the Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) occurred at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. ATMC is the facility in charge of all inbound and outbound flights. Its failure caused the cancellation of almost 300 flights on that day.

The usual finger-pointing is here again. There was a power outage, airport management insisted. But Meralco flatly denied this. Now, who is telling the truth? As usual, nobody takes full responsibility.

If Meralco is telling the truth, then why are airport authorities fabricating stories about a power outage? Can we blame others if some suspect that there was sabotage if this was the scenario?

On the other hand, if Meralco is lying, what is its motive then? Granting that there was indeed a power outage, then where are the backup generator sets in the airport? It's a pain in the neck to think that the country's premier airport doesn't have backup generator sets when small sari-sari stores even have them.

What happened to the so-called Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)? Did it bog down? And also the so-called backup UPS? What an unfortunate circumstance to happen on the very first day of the year! Is this because they are already outdated? Why not replace them? Why were they left unnoticed? Was there no regular maintenance check-up?

Some people describe what occurred as a glitch, which means “a sudden, usually temporary malfunction of equipment.” In whatever way one may describe it, in countries like Japan, we would have seen mass resignations from airport management. But maybe we have already come to terms with the reality that ours is the opposite.

What occurred painted an ugly picture of the Philippines for the whole world to see, made uglier by explanations that are illogical, unreasonable, or plain stupid. There is no doubt that it is also a tourism nightmare, and it came at a time when we are struggling to recover from the economic effects of COVID-19.

Some senators manifested their interest in investigating the incident. And in a country where there is investigation fatigue, one can only pray that something worth the people’s money will come out of such an inquiry; otherwise, it will just fall under the long list of unresolved legislative investigations that this country has produced.

Where have all the billions of pesos poured into modernizing our transport system gone?