By Jane Bautista
The entire Philippine airspace will shut down for six hours on May 17, from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., to make way for the replacement of the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system that failed on New Year’s Day and led to a massive disruption of operations at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the country’s main gateway.
Bryan Co, senior assistant general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), in a press briefing on Tuesday said the maintenance activity had been coordinated last week to give the airlines “lead time” in recalibrating flight schedules and informing their passengers.
The MIAA will meet with the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) and other airport authorities on Wednesday to hear the plans of the airlines in response to the scheduled maintenance of the Communications, Navigations, Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) system.
“These are all proactive efforts to make sure that the CNS/ATM is reliable as an offshoot of what happened earlier this year,” Co said, referring to the January 1 aviation mess that affected around 56,000 passengers and 361 domestic and international flights to and from Manila.
The technical glitch in January that shut down the country’s airspace happened after a UPS unit failed to work because one of its cooling blowers conked out.
On Monday, the Labor Day holiday, an eight-hour power outage disrupted operations at NAIA Terminal 3, leading to flight delays and cancellations that affected more than 9,000 passengers.
Advisory sent early
In an April 28 advisory, CAAP informed the public of the corrective maintenance activity scheduled on May 3, from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., and May 17, from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., that would result in the suspension of operations at the Philippine Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC), which houses the CNS/ATM system.
CAAP said the maintenance would involve the repair of the automatic voltage regulator (AVR), replacement of the UPS, and upgrade of the air traffic management system power supply.