Thousands stranded as power outage hits Manila airport

Tens of thousands of travellers have been stranded at airports in the Philippines as 300 flights cancelled or diverted after a power outage caused a malfunction of air traffic control at the country’s busiest hub in Manila.

Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) is the main gateway for travelers to the Philippines, serving the capital city Manila and surrounding regions.

The communication and radar equipment failure, detected Sunday morning, January 1 forced hundreds of flights to be cancelled, delayed or diverted, affecting some 56,000 passengers at Manila Airport, according to the airport operator. It was unclear how many overflights were affected.

Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista apologised to people for the halted flights, blaming the power outage for the breakdown that also affected operations at other airports in the country.

He said the outdated existing facility should be upgraded immediately and that a backup system was also needed.

The MNL Authority said in a statement that “the system has been partially restored thereby allowing limited flight operations” as of 08:00 GMT. By late evening, eight flight arrivals and eight departures had been allowed, according to the operator.

The outage hit as many people were planning to travel after the Christmas and New Year break.

Photos and videos circulating on social media showed long queues at the airport and airline personnel distributing food packs and drinks to stranded passengers.

There were chaotic scenes at check-in counters across the country as thousands of people tried to rebook tickets or find out when their flights might take off.

Others who had boarded their aircraft before the glitch was announced waited for hours, then had to disembark.

Tycoon Manny Pangilinan, chairman of Philippine telecommunications conglomerate PLDT Inc, tweeted that he had been flying from Tokyo to Manila when the plane was diverted to Haneda  Airport in Japan due to “radar and navigation facilities” going down.

“6 hours of useless flying but inconvenience to travelers and losses to tourism and business are horrendous. Only in the PH. Sigh,” Pangilinan wrote.

Philippine Airlines and budget carrier Cebu Pacific both said they were offering passengers due to fly on Sunday free rebooking or the option to convert tickets into vouchers.