On New Year’s Day (Sunday), a number of aircraft to and from Manila, the capital of the Philippines, were halted due to an air traffic control issue. Around 56,000 passengers were affected by 282 flights that were either delayed, cancelled, or diverted to other regional airports, according to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
The NAIA said in a series of tweets on Sunday morning that the nation’s civil aviation regulator has put emergency mechanisms in place to deal with the issue and allow aircraft operations to restart as soon as feasible. ‘ Flight arrivals and departures are anticipated to be rescheduled according to updated timetables. Given this, travellers were encouraged to wait for airline instructions or announcements, remain within the terminals, and seek out the nearest airline or airport help desk for information’, airport said.
The air traffic management system had been mostly restored by the afternoon, according to the Manila airport’s managers, enabling some restricted flight operations. The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines has started accepting planes into the NAIA following the partial restoration of its air traffic control system, the NAIA tweeted. The first flight to land following the problem was the Philippine Airlines flight PR222 from Brisbane, Australia. Another tweet said, ‘First departure: Cathay Pacific flight CX 930 to Hong Kong from NAIA Terminal 3’.
Long lines of airport employees handing out food and beverages to stranded passengers were seen in social media videos and images, according to Reuters. ‘Radar and navigational equipment at NAIA are reportedly down. Three hours into the journey, I was halfway home from Tokyo, but I had to go back to Haneda. Flying for six hours is pointless, but the annoyance for passengers and the harm done to the economy are terrible. only in the PH. Sigh,’ Filipino businessman Manny V. Pangilinan tweeted.
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