Thousands stranded at Philippine airports due to power outage
- ‘Technical issue’ involving air traffic management centre at Manila airport forced hundreds of flights to be cancelled, delayed or diverted
- Chaotic scenes as thousands tried to re-book tickets, find out more information, or waited for hours before learning about glitch and having to disembark
Tens of thousands of travellers were stranded at Philippine airports on Sunday after a power outage knocked out communication and radar equipment at the country’s busiest hub in Manila, forcing hundreds of flights to be cancelled, delayed or diverted.
Aviation authorities detected a “technical issue” on Sunday morning involving the air traffic management centre at Manila’s domestic and international airport.
More than 360 flights in and out of Manila were cancelled, diverted or delayed, affecting around 56,000 passengers.
The outage hit as many people began returning to the capital for work and school after the Christmas and New Year break.
There were chaotic scenes at check-in counters across the country as thousands of people tried to re-book tickets or find when their flights might take off.
Others who had boarded their aircraft before the glitch was announced waited for hours and were then disembarked.
Airport officials did not initially specify the cause of the problem. But transportation department secretary Jaime Bautista said the air traffic management centre, which controls inbound and outbound flights, “went down” due to a power outage that resulted in the loss of communication, radio, radar and internet.
“The secondary problem was the power surge due to the power outage which affected the equipment,” he said.