The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines on Wednesday clarified the reported air traffic congestion that caused flight delays at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport particularly last Monday.
Gen. Rodante Joya, CAAP deputy director general for operations, was referring to safety concerns raised when landing aircraft were compelled to hover for an extended period over the airport while Typhoon “Lando” was pounding Northern Luzon.
Joya pointed out that Naia is limited to only 40 runway events in an hour. “NAIA has only one runway that can accommodate jetliners. The secondary runway that was recently activated can only accommodate small aircraft.”
Stressing runway limitations, Joya thanked Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez for giving the aviation authority the chance to clarify the issue on air traffic congestion.
Romualdez claimed that the “horrible traffic congestion” forced the plane he was in to hover for an hour over the metropolis until the aircraft was given clearance to land on Monday night.
Joya explained that aircraft coming from the southern part of the Philippines, particularly from the Visayas and Mindanao, could not immediately land on Monday because of other north-bound planes that had to cancel and needed to return toNaia.
“Those [aircraft] returning to Manila were not scheduled to arrive during that time. So they eventually clustered. Therefore there is no choice for our air traffic controllers but to make them hover over Metro Manila so they can line up for landing,” Joya said, adding that priority landing or takeoff is given to commercial jetliners and other big aircraft.
The CAAP official said that the fact that every airplane was able to land safely on Monday despite the inclement weather spoke volumes on the capability of air traffic controllers.
“That is proof of the ability of our air traffic controllers to maintain the safety of flights, helping them all land in Manila safely,” Joya said.
He lamented, however, that there were 14 air traffic employees who left CAAP this year for greener pastures.
The 14 were offered the same job with higher pay in airports in Middle East particularly Doha and Qatar.
