Sweltering at the NAIA
As Holy Week travel began peaking, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport acted up again. On Holy Wednesday, the eve of a long Lenten break for most office workers in this country, the circuit breaker tripped and power began fluctuating at the NAIA Terminal 2. The Manila International Airport Authority attributed the power fluctuation to an increased load caused by a high heat index of 42 degrees Celsius. MIAA officials just recently said they were ready for the Holy Week travel rush and rising temperatures attributed to El Niño.
On Jan. 1 last year, holiday travelers suffered acute inconvenience after the NAIA was hit by a massive power outage that forced the shutdown of Philippine airspace, disrupting both domestic and international flights. The outage was later traced to a cooling fan that failed to work in one of the uninterruptible power supplies of the Air Traffic Management Center. The backup power supply also failed to start. When technicians tried to bypass the UPS to restore power, it set off a voltage surge that damaged more equipment.
During the power fluctuations last Wednesday, the generators at least quickly came onstream. But the power was not enough to operate the air conditioners. Passengers complained of the discomfort as the temperature rose at the terminal. The heat was on top of passenger concerns that they might get bitten by bed bugs or run into rats roaming at the country’s busiest gateway.
The MIAA engineering team later decided to recalibrate the airport’s transformer to prevent another tripping of the circuit breaker even if the heat index soars. The team reportedly promised that there would be no repeat of the problem.
Transport officials have decided to toss the NAIA problem to the private sector, with a consortium led by San Miguel Corp. bagging the P170.6-billion rehabilitation, maintenance and operation contract for 15 years. The consortium includes the group behind South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corp., one of the world’s best gateways.
There are high hopes that the consortium will turn the NAIA into an airport at par with Incheon International, the main gateway to South Korean capital Seoul. But the takeover by the private sector is still half a year away. That’s still a lot of time to make the NAIA experience an unpleasant one, and to turn off foreign travelers from visiting the Philippines. Until the private sector takes over, the NAIA management must work to prevent more glitches in what is supposed to be the nation’s premier airport.