By Ma. Cristina Arayata/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) is still assessing the computer glitch that happened to its Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) system on Tuesday.
“There’s no result yet. Authorities want to go to the bottom of (this issue),” CAAP spokesperson Eric Apolonio told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Thursday.
The technical people and suppliers were called to explain to CAAP what happened, Apolonio added.
According to him, the said system was just inaugurated last year.
“We have to address the problem. We have a backup which is the old system. The old air traffic management service is manual, unlike this one which is computer generated,” he remarked.
Apolonio said the Philippine airspace was shut down for 30 minutes last Tuesday due to safety reasons.
“It’s hard not to shut it down because (the glitch) might cause collision,” he added.
Within that 30 minutes, the system was not functioning fully to guide the aircraft in and out of the Philippine airspace, he explained. “There were ‘blind spots’ in the radar monitors,” he said.
The Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) was the most affected during the glitch, as 81 flights there were affected. The situation in other airports was manageable, according to Apolonio.
Meanwhile, CAAP announced that the glitch happened Tuesday morning. Apolonio claimed that by 1 p.m., all the recovery flights were flown.
He admitted, however, that the glitch caused a domino effect on the other flights since their slots were taken by the affected airlines.
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