According to the airport authority, the power supply at the Philippines’ largest international airport, which had been down for nine hours, has been restored. On Monday, at least 48 domestic flights by Cebu Pacific were cancelled because of the outage at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3. Cebu Pacific confirmed on its Facebook page that the electricity had been restored, but flights to and from Manila were affected. Passengers affected by the power outage were given the option by Cebu Pacific to either rebook or request a refund to be put in a travel fund for future use.
The power failure was caused by a ‘fault current,’ according to some airport engineers. The outage caused congestion at check-in counters and left passengers stranded. Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said in a media briefing that the authorities will investigate the cause of the power outage, and he did not rule out the possibility of sabotage.
According to reports from the Xinhua news agency, the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) stated that the power outage at Terminal 3 occurred shortly after 1 am on Monday. The MIAA stated that ‘standby power is now supplying electricity to critical facilities enabling computer systems of airlines and immigration to function partially and enable processing of both inbound and outbound passengers.’ It added that ‘delayed flights shall be expected’ as a result.
The disruption in travel occurred four months after an outage in January at the country’s primary gateway that affected over 300 flights. In a statement, Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) acknowledged that the incident affected tens of thousands of passengers. On New Year’s Day, the incident also prompted Philippine authorities to shut down the country’s airspace, resulting in the delay, cancellation, or diversion of 361 flights, affecting nearly 65,000 passengers.
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