Philippine authorities have halted flights out and in of Manila on New Year’s Day resulting from a malfunction of air visitors management, inflicting chaos for tens of 1000’s of travellers.
A complete of 282 flights have been both delayed, cancelled or diverted to different regional airports, affecting round 56,000 passengers at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the airport operator stated on Sunday.
As of 4pm (native time) “the system has been partially restored thereby allowing limited flight operations”, the Manila International Airport Authority stated in an announcement.
Video clips and photographs posted on social media confirmed lengthy queues on the airport and airline personnel distributing meals packs and drinks to stranded passengers.
“We’re told radar and navigation facilities at NAIA down. I was on my way home fm Tokyo – 3 hours into the flight, but had to return to Haneda,” tweeted one passenger – Manuel Pangilinan, chairman of Philippine telecommunications conglomerate PLDT.
“6 hours of useless flying but inconvenience to travellers and losses to tourism and business are horrendous. Only in the PH. Sigh.”
Budget service Cebu Pacific stated there was an influence outage and lack of communication on the Philippine Air Traffic Management Center. It provided passengers resulting from fly on Sunday free re-booking or the choice to transform tickets to vouchers.
Philippine Airlines stated plenty of flights have been diverted, cancelled and delayed, and travellers ought to examine the standing of their journey earlier than continuing to the airport.
