Miaa audits power systems after 7-hr outage at Naia

THE Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) is now conducting an assessment of its power systems to ensure that the seven-hour power outage at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) last week will not happen again.

“We are doing an audit of our systems to determine why but happened, what went wrong, are there areas we failed to look into and what can be done on the immediate, short term/medium term and long term. Also, we are going to look into the entire Naia system across all terminals,” Miaa Media

Affairs Officer Connie Bungag said in a text message.

On Saturday, Naia reported a seven-hour power outage between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following day due to issues pertaining to the loadside capacity of Naia.

The power outage disrupted airport operations as the airlines had to resort to manual check-in and loading of baggage while processing of passengers at immigration took longer than usual. A total of 16 international and 15 domestic flights were affected by the incident.

“We are in touch with thirdparty contractors that specialize in high-voltage systems to assist us in diagnosing the substation equipment so we can be properly guided on what should be done to prevent a recurrence of the incident and work towards a wholistic solution to our supply problem,” Bungag said.

She added that Miaa is now assessing the load capacity of its gensets “to ensure 100 percent redundancy.”

“Meanwhile, we are also exploring the use of renewable energy is something to consider especially that this is highly encouraged by no less than President Bongbong Marcos,” Bungag said.

The Department of Transportation (DOTR) confirmed that “airport shareholders gave Transport Secretary Jaime J. Bautista an assurance a repeat of Saturday’s brownout at Terminal 3 will not happen, with focus on contingency measures on alleviating passenger inconvenience during airport operation disruption.”