2023-What a start!

Who would have imagined that air traffic would be completely stopped for the whole country last January 1, 2023?

Just when many of our people, from various parts of the country and abroad, expected to join their loved ones on New Year’s Day, they found themselves stranded inside airplanes, airports, elsewhere! Tourists and other travelers as well found their scheduled trips unexpectedly cancelled.

Aside from the widespread, serious trouble/inconvenience/stress/trauma/expense etc. that New Year air traffic halt caused thousands of people and the losses incurred by airlines, businesses/others, that air traffic glitch would have been catastrophic!

Thank God for the airline pilots who, despite being blind and deaf with no air traffic controller guiding them, communicated among themselves and adeptly managed to take the appropriate steps to ensure the safety of every passenger and plane during that sudden air traffic fiasco!

Everyone’s immediate question- what happened?

Was there a breach of national security? Was there any sabotage?

Slowly, the lame, exasperating explanations started to be revealed.

According to Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) Director General Antonio Tamayo, “the main uninterruptible power supply of the CNS/ATM (Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management) failed at around 9:49 a.m. after its cooling blower conked out. A backup UPS should have kicked in, but he said “for some reason,” it also failed!!!

He said “CAAP engineers tried to connect to the commercial line instead” but get this! That action supposedly led to more equipment failing as the commercial line supplied power at 380 volts when the system can only handle 220 volts!

And the CAAP engineers did not know the voltage difference beforehand or at all??? Goodness.

Now, the fingerpointing continues.

The technology is outdated, should have been changed years before.

Are they suggesting no regular maintenance check/review has been done for years because no one seemed to have sent alert signals earlier due to the gravity and high risk of having what they now claim is outdated technology?

If transport officials “HAD EXPECTED that the supposedly outdated air traffic system would eventually conk out, for goodness sake, why oh why was this outdated system not replaced sooner, years earlier?

And more fingerpointing – now, to officials of past administrations.

Will all the ongoing, proposed investigations hold responsible the truly negligent involved in this 2023 New Year air traffic mess?

As the same “outdated technology” continues to be used now that air traffic control has resumed, how safe are travellers and planes?

Will the authorities wait for another conking out, or God forbid, fatal accidents to finally change the much, long-needed updated technology?

Aside from the New Year air traffic mess, the upsetting and angering New Year staggering bad news was that “this country’s debt jumped to a new record high of P13.52 trillion as of end-September 2022!”

Instead of public funds to be used for our needy Filipinos, a huge percentage will be diverted instead to pay for this increasing huge debt legacy of Du30!

Filipinos should demand clear, transparent explanations about how Du30 incurred the biggest ever national debt and also demand who benefitted from the huge debt!

Definitely, the Filipino masses did not benefit from the Du30 debts.

Just look at the present struggling Filipinos who are trying hard daily to make ends meet. They also have to bear with an unqualified agriculture secretary who cannot keep the prices of onions down despite his official presidential order for all traders to obey!

Why are there no official secretaries of agriculture and health appointed since June/July 2022?

And Marcos Junior’s administration dare raise the people’s PhilHealth contributions instead of demanding from erring officials the return of the stolen PhilHealth,  the Pharmally millions and oh, the unpaid Marcos P203 billion estate tax as well!