Flights to and from Manila, Philippines suspended due to ATC glitch; 56,000 passengers affected

Several flights to and from the Philippines' capital city Manila were suspended on New Year's Day (Sunday) because of a malfunction of the air traffic control. According to Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), a total of 282 flights were either delayed, cancelled or diverted to other regional airports, affecting around 56,000 passengers.

In a series of tweets on Sunday morning, the NAIA said that the country's civil aviation authority had put in place emergency protocols to address the situation to enable flight operations to resume as soon as possible.

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"It is expected that flight departures and arrivals will be retimed to new schedules. In view of this, passengers were advised to await instructions or announcements from the airlines and stay inside the terminals and approach the nearest airline or airport help desk for updates," the airport said.

By afternoon, the Manila airport operators said the air traffic management system had been partially restored thereby allowing limited flight operations.

"Following the partial restoration of its air traffic management system, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines has begun accepting flights into the NAIA," the NAIA tweeted, adding the first flight to land after the glitch was the Philippine Airlines flight PR222 from Brisbane, Australia.

"First departure: Cathay Pacific flight CX 930 to Hong Kong from NAIA Terminal 3," read another tweet.

On social media platforms, video clips and photographs showed long queues at the airport airline personnel distributing food packs and drinks to the stranded passengers, Reuters reported.

"We’re told radar and navigation facilities at NAIA are down. I was on my way home from Tokyo - 3 hours into the flight, but had to return to Haneda. 6 hours of useless flying but inconvenience to travellers and losses to tourism and business are horrendous. Only in the PH. Sigh," Manny V. Pangilinan, a Filipino businessman, tweeted.

(With inputs from agencies)

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