Power outage hits NAIA Terminal 3

[_Cathy_]

Just when I thought our airports couldn't get any worse.

I am at complete disbelief!

BLACKOUT. Power goes out at the NAIA Terminal 3 on Saturday evening, April 2. Photo by Bryan Banquil via Twitter

MANILA, Philippines (4th UPDATE) – Power went out at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 on Saturday evening, April 2.
Some netizens posted photos and video of the power outage on Twitter.


The Twitter account of NAIA replied to these tweets, confirming that there was indeed no power at Terminal 3. It then said that NAIA is “currently assessing the situation to have the power back on."


In a phone interview, an airport operations staff who requested anonymity told Rappler that the blackout started at around 8:45 pm.

He said that the system is “down” at the terminal, affecting operations at the departure area. However, he added that operations at the arrival area still continue.

Just before 11 pm, however, netizens onboard some of the planes tweeted and quoted pilots as saying all arrivals and departures were on hold.

The airport staff also said that NAIA is trying to determine the cause of the power outage.

An April 1 notice by Meralco said that maintenance schedules from 11:30 pm of April 2 until 4:30 am of April 3 would affect a "portion of NAIA Road from Domestic Road to near Electrical Road in Pasay City." The reason cited was the "relocation of facilities affected by the construction of NAIA Expressway project along NAIA Road in Pasay City."

It was not clear if the power outage at Terminal 3 was related to this.

Shortly before midnight, a pilot of a Cebu Pacific plane that landed at about 10:50 pm from Bacolod announced to passengers that departure planes were not allowed to leave and that all terminal bays were occupied.

Rappler's Mara Mercado who is on board that plane reported that a stewardess announced to them, "We have lost communication with our wrap control. No one can assign us to our proper bay assignment."

Passengers have not been able to disembark from planes despite having landed hours ago. As of 12:30 am, Mercado reported, "The planes are being manually towed to any free terminal bay."

Ariel Arcilla of the Media Affairs office told Rappler, “Passengers/planes now being directed to Terminal 4 for offboarding.”

Track record

The power outage is yet another addition to the string of inconveniences at NAIA Terminal 3. In January, part of the ceiling at the same terminal collapsed, slightly injuring a foreign passenger.

Terminal 3 opened in 2008 after an extended legal battle between the government and the Filipino-German consortium that built it. Terminal 3 has not suffered any major incidents since it underwent a major rehabilitation in 2013-14.

Prior to the incident that involved the collapsed ceiling last January, passengers had complained about leaks, collapsed floors, malfunctioning equipment, congestion, dilapidated facilities, and rude or corrupt personnel.

All these combined earned for Manila a reputation that pushed it to the top of the list of the world's worst airports compiled by the travel website "The Guide to Sleeping in Airports" from 2011-13. It got off the list after congestion problems were eased by more passengers passing through Terminal 3. – Rappler.com

[K.I.L.L.]

Oh boy... Just when I thought they were already improving...

[StockEngine]

LTO
BoC
NAIA

Sige pa lol

[macsd]

Just when I thought our airports couldn't get any worse.

I am at complete disbelief!

Not until you have 2 incompetent idiots Abaya & Honrado running the show.

[chua_riwap]

Kahit brownout, wala bang backup power genset ang T3? Tang nang airport yan, walang silbi.....

[Stigg ma]

Kahit brownout, wala bang backup power genset ang T3? Tang nang airport yan, walang silbi.....

backup? what are you talking about? we're in a government run by dumb people, when LTO is offline, is there a backup? NONE!

and yes there are physical gensets there, but the diesel fuel is long gone/stolen and you just cant purchase large quantities of diesel in a day for an excuse that its missing...

anything that has to do with DOTC is a fail because the very head is a FAIL! ABAYA FAIL!

[yebo]

kasalanan ni Pnoy yan!

no, wait!
kasalanan ni Mar yan! kung si duterte ang presidente gawin nyang sinlaki ng changi ang naia, etc, etc, etc. at gagawin niya yan in 3-6 months lang ha!

[Mang Jose]

Not until you have 2 incompetent idiots Abaya & Honrado running the show.

Agree. How about the GM of T3 Bing Lina? He should have ensured that gensets are available for backup power

[_Cathy_]

T3 was in darkness for 5 hours I think. That's a security nightmare

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[unmarked]

This is where our taxes go to, people. Incompetence within the govt is un-f*cking-believable.

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[dr. d]

so what caused the power outage?
... hard to blame anyone if the cause is unknown...

[Monseratto]

Teka teka muna...

Roxas rejects 'premature' calls for Abaya to resign | News | GMA News Online

[leonleon]

Teka teka muna...

Roxas rejects 'premature' calls for Abaya to resign | News | GMA News Online

Siyempre and I'm not surprised anymore coz:

1) Kapartido niya yang si Abaya eh.

2) Mar is Mr. meeting. - meeting muna, pagusapan muna, pag-aralan muna. Sang milyong meeting ang gusto niyan bago makakilos o makagawa ng desisyon.

3) Pagkatapos ng meeting, at pagkatapos pag-aralan, wala naman siyang gagawin, lalo na pag di niya gusto resulta ng pagpupulong o ng pag-aaral nila.

Etong huli na ito binulong lang sa kin ng mga taga DTI na nakatrabaho si Mar. They called him Mr. Kupad.

[Monseratto]

EDITORIAL | Just fire him already. Please.

EDITORIAL | Just fire him already. Please.
By: InterAksyon.com
April 7, 2016 5:14 PM


InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

How shall we put this?

Secretary Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya should go. He should resign. He should be fired. Should have been fired a long time ago. Abaya is incompetent. He has been, unqualifiedly, the worst Cabinet official in the history of the Philippine Republic, or Philippine Republics.

That Abaya has not resigned adds to the people's misery the insult of his callousness and delusions. That he has not even come close to being fired implicates – again and again and again – the President and his nominated successor in those same sins of mismanagement and poor judgment, if not arrogant denial.

Secretary Abaya should leave. He should be axed. Lord…

We did take a moment to consider: But what would be the point? Now, of all times? When we’re all just waiting for him to finally get off this crumbling train. Why now, still, with less than three months to go till June 30 when President Aquino promised he will take Abaya with him? Because every day Abaya’s ineptitude risks the lives, livelihood, and sanity of millions of Filipinos. Despite everything of which the Aquino Administration has convinced itself, Abaya has long been proof that may namamatay sa trapik.

Mar Roxas, feigning outrage over a five-hour power outage that hit the country’s newest and most modern international terminal over the weekend, called for the punishment and ouster of "all those responsible" for the inexcusable and incalculable price of the crime of that day. But then Roxas stopped short of actually naming Abaya, his hand-picked successor at the Department of Transportation and Communication.

One of the most pointed questions asked of Roxas since the presidential campaign started has been: Why should Filipinos give Team Daang Matuwid another six years to fix the country's mobility mix, when over six years they not only failed to fix anything, they actually made everything worse? Roxas' go-to response is to say that fixing the MRT-LRT, building roads, and levelling up airports is not like buying things off a grocery shelf. Abaya, he therefore frames, is a good man with an impossible job, and he has been laying the foundations, taking care of the prerequisites, to smooth things over for the next guy. The way, we suppose, Mar Roxas used his own year as transport secretary to smooth it over for Abaya.

A quick recap of some things Abaya did to make it easy for the next government:

He required all motor vehicles to change license plates, over the reasoned objections even of saner Liberal Party leaders like Ralph Recto, who wondered aloud: But why?

Never mind that the Commission on Audit would subsequently question the awarding of the P3.8-billion project. Abaya proceeded without ensuring that contracts or capacities were in place to actually deliver the new plates. Just last month, with untold tens of thousands still waiting for their plates, it was revealed that stocks of unused metal, piled high and unused for the plakas, were pilfered from right under the DOTC leaders’ noses by people who obviously had something more productive to do with them than Abaya.

In similar fashion, Abaya cancelled the contracts for the production and delivery of drivers’ licenses, again neglecting to ensure that suppliers would be in place to deliver the replacements.

Meanwhile, traffic on EDSA grew slower. Lines to the MRT and LRT snaked to compressed, sweaty kilometers. Speaking of which:

Abaya meanwhile let the MRT and LRT run out of rails. He almost nearly ran out of trains, too. The few that kept running were limited to half the speed that people knew pre-Abaya, because you have to be ginger when running on rails with a lapsed expiry date but no replacement, especially when it’s raining and slippery, and the doors no longer close. You also have to run the trains slowly so they can come to a controlled stop at Taft.

And then came last Saturday's 5-hour power outage at Terminal 3 that we now learn had been flagged by no less than the Manila International Airports Authority GM Jose Angel Honrado as early as August 2015. Lo-bat na, and backup generators needed maintenance, if not replacement.

Curiously, Honrado did nothing. Neither did Abaya.

We'll stop there, we swear. We won't add to the litany of kapalpakan anymore. But to say that they missed some details with the power generators is like saying Abaya imported replacement MRT trams without any engines, and… oh, good grief.

Honrado, while explaining the power-gen fiasco, more famously quipped: "Minalas kami." (We ran into some bad luck.)

Abaya could only offer his personal assurance that "we continue to be focused on…ensuring that a similar incident will not happen at NAIA."

For that was as far as President Aquino's admonition went. "Make sure this doesn't happen again," were his parting words to the Abaya-Honrado tandem last Monday. Mar Roxas, for his part, said it would be premature to judge Abaya until we know exactly what happened.

But we know exactly what happened. Minalas ang taumbayan kay Abaya, and with a leadership and then an aspirant that have no integrity to fire the secretary general of their party. The option, the need, the urgency to fire Abaya has been such a no-brainer that it has become fair for oppositionists to speculate and wonder aloud: What power does he hold over Aquino and Roxas?

The Aquino administration holds on to Abaya because, ostensibly, at least his integrity – quite apart from his competence – is unquestioned. But that, too, is not true. Former MRT 3 general manager Al Vitangcol III accuses Abaya (and Roxas) not only of "gross and inexcusable inaction," but of "willful and deliberate manipulation of the events and processes related to the maintenance of MRT-3", suggesting that such manipulation was designed to justify "emergency" procurements of maintenance services from unproven suppliers.

But let's not get into that now. The ineptitude, the irresponsibility, the mismanagement, the trail of fails, are as impossible to miss as the kilometer of heads ahead of you in the queue at the MRT. The proven incompetence, even without the allegations of willful misconduct, should have long been more than enough for President Aquino to leave Abaya on the tracks he promised to lay across.

President Aquino and Mar Roxas, rather than excoriate Abaya, have extolled him instead. In his valedictory address a full year before he actually steps down, PNoy likened Abaya to a most productive tree. People throw stones at the most bountiful trees, he said. (Which is true. But Filipinos also chop down useless, tasteless, pointless, waste-of-space chesas.)

Mar, for his part, says Abaya was a good transport secretary. (If Abaya would accept, Mar would consider reappointing him to the DOTC if he wins the presidency.)

It is perplexing why Aquino and Roxas have failed to take every opportunity to demonstrate leadership and basic management instincts. They still could, and should, go through the motions now, because opportunities to sack someone so universally reviled doesn't come around 14, 15, 17, 21 times.

A train that rolls with its doors open will bring us to the same tragic point where an airport with no backup generators grounds us. Memes notwithstanding, these are no laughing matters. Consider this fact: Filipinos lose more to traffic than we do to corruption. P3 billion a day, according to JICA. A trillion pesos a year, or a full third of the government's annual budget. And that's not counting the OFW contracts jeopardized by every delayed or missed flight, the lives lost and that will be lost, the national security nightmares offered by an international gateway prone to power failures.

Aquino and Roxas mock and insult us with the prospect of letting Jun Abaya walk out of a completed term with his deluded head held high. Angry, suffering commuters lined up and seething will be the lasting symbol of Daang Matuwid. For crying out loud, give us the satisfaction, though there'd be little of that to savor. It's never too late to fire Abaya. Even though it already is.

[unmarked]

No one knows pa. Baka di na rin natin malaman kung ano talaga lol. Sabi ng tropa ko ung mga foreigners nung nakalabas na ng plane, were hugging each other. Lol akala siguro nila terror or something. 3 hours on the plane ung tropa from landing to de-planeing. Grabe!

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[macsd]

Sabi ng tropa ko ung mga foreigners nung nakalabas na ng plane, were hugging each other. Lol akala siguro nila terror or something.
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This is new gmik ng DOT, upon arrival pa lang thrilling na...."It's more Fun in the Philippines"

[kimbon]

I was in NAIA 3 to pick up my nephew yesterday at exactly 4pm. buti nangyari ito ng evening otherwise nag wala si nephew. bugnutin pa naman ang batang yan.

[dreamur]

Heads should roll....

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[dreamur]

5-hour blackout at NAIA3 forces planes to land at other terminals, strands thousands

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[dreamur]

If I were Pnoy, this is where I draw the line -Abaya and Honrado should submit their resignation papers on Monday! You want to support the administration yet you have this embarrassing situation that slaps you in the face and leave you hurting ang frustrated. Meantime Abaya will just issue a general statement that he will look into the generator system when obviously it is more than that. What an incompetent and ineffective head that should be severed with a sharp ax!

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