The Philippine government has announced that it will launch an official investigation into the New Year’s Day airport outage that affected over 56,000 passengers.
At around 10:00 local time on January 1, 2023, there was a loss of power at the Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) which serves as the control facility for all inbound and outbound flights, as well as overflights within the Philippine airspace.
CNN reports that, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), the power outage had affected the central air traffic control system. Officials said that the back-up power supply had been insufficient to restore the system.
A transport advocacy group in the Philippines urged affected travelers to sue the CAAP, with the group believing that CAAP must be held liable for making ‘the worst New Year air transport situation in the country’s history’.
Filipino Senator Grace Poe, who chairs the government’s public services committee, had already expressed her disappointment over the incident.
“There needs to be transparency and accountability from the CAAP,” Senator Grace Poe said
She added: “We will therefore conduct a hearing as part of the Senate’s oversight function to determine who is liable and what we need to do to avoid the malfunction from happening again. We will direct them (CAAP) to submit a full report of what caused the supposed glitch and power outage.”