The authorities ought to compensate the 1000’s of passengers whose flights have been grounded on January 1 and a pair of resulting from an outage of the nation’s air site visitors administration system, House methods and means panel chairperson Joey Salceda of Albay mentioned Monday.
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines’ (CAAP) Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Systems for Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) malfunctioned on New Year’s Day, an incident that both delayed, cancelled or diverted at the very least 282 flights.
“I am asking my friend Secretary [Jaime] Bautista to look into how the CAAP can compensate passengers hassled by these delays. Passengers pay a terminal fee, and airlines pay fees to the CAAP. They failed both sectors, in this case. And there’s real financial damage to both passengers and airlines as a result of this failure,” Salceda mentioned.
The compensation could possibly be granted offered that CAAP certify the air site visitors administration system energy subject as a security purpose for flight cancellations, to permit passengers with cancelled flights to be eligible for full reimbursement ought to they select to avail of the choice, the Albay congressman added.
He cited the Joint Administrative Order (JAO) No. 1 s. 2012 of the Transportation and Trade departments, which states that “in case the air carrier cancels the flight because of force majeure, safety and/or security reasons, as certified by the CAAPs, a passenger shall have the right to be reimbursed for the full value of the fare.”
“This [move should be done by CAAP] because since it is clearly the fault of the government and not of the airlines, many passengers are unable to avail of basic compensation and accommodation packages such as free hotel rooms. The JAO apparently does not have a provision for when it’s clearly the fault of the administrative agencies,” Salceda mentioned.
“[And] so, the least the CAAP can do is certify this event as a safety reason for cancellation, so that the reimbursement mechanism can be set into motion. It’s the least that the DOTr [The Department of Transportation] and the CAAP can do at this point,” Salceda added.
Salceda then estimated a complete of P660 million or P10,000 value of monetary remuneration for every of the 66,000 passengers affected, together with the 56,000 stranded on Sunday.
“This system-wide issue, which is bad enough as it is and terrible considering the rush to get back to work after the holidays, should never happen again. I don’t think JAO 1 took it into account, either,” Salceda mentioned.
He additionally underscored that there’s a clear must replace or change insurance policies to mirror what passengers are entitled to when the federal government is at fault, in addition to the necessity to see whether or not the failure might have been averted, and whether or not the CAAP complied faithfully with State Safety Program for air operations.
“We need to hold people accountable. I mean, I can’t say this is force majeure. You can foresee power outages. You can foresee surges in air traffic. Someone was at fault here,” he mentioned. — BM, GMA Integrated News
