Acting Transportation chief Giovanni Lopez conducted an inspection of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines’ (CAAP) air traffic management center (ATMC) to prevent a repeat of the airspace shutdown in 2023.
According to the Department of Transportation in a statement on Wednesday, Lopez held the inspection ahead of the observation of All Souls’ and All Saints’ Day, as well as the holiday season.
During the check up, Lopez instructed CAAP to perform all necessary measures for repairs and upgrades of the ATMC.
The ATMC serves as the facility for controlling and overseeing all inbound and outbound flights, as well as overflights within the Philippine airspace.
‘I just want to emphasize that I don’t want a repeat of what happened last January 1, 2023,’ the acting transport chief stressed.
Meanwhile, CAAP, for its part, said it has implemented upgrades in its existing Communications, Navigation, Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM).
CAAP said it also already purchased new uninterruptible power supply units for its CNS/ATM to prevent what happened in 2023 from happening again.
‘We checked the redundancy, among others. Let’s just make sure that what happened before won’t happen again so that no passengers will be inconvenienced, especially from All Saints’ Day up to Christmas and New Year,’ Lopez said.
It was on the first day of 2023 when CAAP’s ATMC went down due to power outage, resulting in loss of communication, radio, radar and internet.
The system issue caused disruption of flights and affected thousands of passengers in the country as well as in other airports in the country. /apl