A POWER outage plunged the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 into darkness overnight, forcing flight cancellations that stranded thousands on Sunday.
As many as 78 flights by the country’s largest carrier Cebu Pacific were canceled, affecting nearly 14,000 passengers, the company said in a statement.
Flag carrier Philippine Airlines also said some of its flights were cancelled or delayed but could not immediately say how many.
The blackout hit Terminal 3, which services mostly domestic flights, late on Saturday and power was not restored until before dawn on Sunday.
Exhausted passengers sprawled on the floor as check-in counters and luggage carousels shut down. Long queues formed outside the terminal as entrances were closed until power was restored.
Terminal 3 handles an average of 350 domestic and international flights daily, according to data from the Transportation Department.
It is one of four terminals in a complex that was once dubbed by the travel website Guide to Sleeping in Airports as the world’s worst due to leaking toilets and creaking facilities.
“We are looking into the root cause of this problem,” Terminal 3 general manager Octavio Lina told dzMM radio.
Manila power retailer Meralco said a transmission line tripped briefly but was restored in minutes, suggesting that the problem could be with the airport’s systems. Airport officials, on the other hand, said full power was not restored until 2 a.m. Sunday.
The four Manila airport terminals were designed for 17 million passengers annually, but overuse has made the airport notorious for flight delays.
Plans to build a new airport outside Manila have not materialized under Aquino. An excruciatingly slow infrastructure overhaul has led to chronic commuter train breakdowns and traffic jams.
The power outage hit 8:45 p.m. on Saturday. The terminal’s standby generator set could only sustain the lights.
X-ray machines and the computers used by the different airlines operating at Terminal 3 were knocked out of commission until regular power was restored.
Immigration personnel had to process international passengers manually, while health officials had to rely on a portable thermal scanner to clear incoming international passengers.
Security personnel had a hard time inspecting luggage of departing passengers, causing long queues at the entrance gates.
About 31 flights were affected Saturday evening, and holding time for flights was over an hour.
Two Cebu Pacific flights were canceled—5J467 Manila-Iloilo and 5J579 Manila-Cebu—while three international flights were delayed.
On Sunday morning, 36 flights for Cebu Pacific were canceled and two more international flights were delayed.
A spokesman of Meralco, Joe Zaldariagga, told radio dzBB that they double-checked and were sure that there was no tripping on their side, and that the problem was at the airport.
Transportation and Communications Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya blamed Meralco for the five-hour outage, but admitted the 10 standby generator sets enough to power the terminal failed to work and transmit power.
In an interview with radio dzBB, Abaya refused to acknowledge that the generator sets were ill-maintained and insisted the public had to wait for the result of the ongoing probe because the priority of the airport officials was to restore power.
“I have to check. That could be a possibility. Was it fully drained, there was no charging prior to this or was it charged but it didn’t switch power. We will find out before we can say why they didn’t work,” Abaya said.
While power returned at 2 a.m., another outage hit the terminal at 5 a.m., Abaya said.
Abaya said the generator sets did not kick in because no power was transmitted to the building. He said he would alert all other airports nationwide to prevent similar problems with their standby generator sets.
“We will have this checked. If the problem was maintenance, then we have to check [the maintenance procedure] not only in Manila… but all other airports nationwide. But let’s find out what was the real reason the generator sets failed. They have not pinpointed this because last night, the priority was to restore power,” Abaya said.