130 flights, 20,000 passengers to be affected by May 17 airspace shutdown — MIAA

Hundreds of flights and tens of thousands of passengers are expected to be affected by the scheduled six-hour shutdown of the Philippine airspace on May 17, the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) said Wednesday.

“Based on our projection there will be around 130 flights that could be possibly affected,” MIAA officer-in-charge Senior Assistant General Manager Bryan Co said at a press briefing.

“Based on the estimated passenger load, it will be around 20,000 passengers,” he said.

On Tuesday, the MIAA announced the country’s airspace will be shut down on May 17 to give way for maintenance activities on the country’s air traffic management system to avoid a repeat of the New Year’s Day shutdown.

The airspace shutdown will be from 12 midnight until 6 a.m. on May 17.

“That's why the key here is advanced planning...,” the MIAA OIC said.

He said the MIAA already spoke with aviation stakeholders earlier concerning the airspace shutdown.

“We have around 40 airline operators here in Manila. Most of them attended via Zoom and the bigger carriers attended face to face, in our meeting at the MIAA office,” Co said.

“The message here is, since this is a planned outage to improve our air traffic system, we need to do this in a timely manner. That's why we've planned this ahead of time. So even if it's still May 17 we already issued the NOTAM last week and the airlines are already working on how they can reschedule their flights so that they can close for sale those that are affected,” he said.

“And for those passengers that have already booked, they can get their alternative travel options such as rebooking or get their new timing for their flight,” he added.

The MIAA said around half of the estimated 130 flights to be affected by the airspace shutdown are international flights, “but majority will be domestic flights.”

“I would say more than 50% would be domestic. And there will be a number of international flights because we do have international flights that leave at midnight especially going to Korea or the Middle East,” he said.

In an advisory, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said corrective maintenance activity will be conducted at the Philippine Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) on May 3 and May 17 to repair the Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR), replace the UPS, and upgrade the ATMS A/B power supply.

The ATMC facility houses the CNS/ATM system, which manages and supervises the air traffic activities within the Philippine Flight Information Region (FIR).

On New Year’s Day, over 50,000 passengers were stranded due to the unexpected shutdown of the Philippine airspace caused by power outage because of several equipment malfunctions at the ATMC.—AOL, GMA Integrated News