MANILA, Philippines – Some flights on May 3 and 17 are being rescheduled to allow for much-needed repairs on the country’s air traffic management equipment.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) will be pushing through with its “corrective maintenance activity” on May 3, from 2 am to 4 am, and again on May 17, from 2 am midnight to 4 am. Philippine airspace will be closed while the repairs are ongoing.

These maintenance activities will focus on repairing critical air traffic management equipment that failed during the New Year’s Day mess at the airport, such as the automatic voltage regulator and uninterruptible power supply.

“Tomorrow, AVR, then 17th, ‘yung UPS naman nila papalitan. Sa 17th, mas malaki ‘yung impact kasi it will be for several hours, tapos wala talagang activity ‘yung Philippine airspace (the UPS will be replaced. The repairs on May 17 will have a bigger impact because it will last for several hours, and there will be no activity at all within Philippine airspace),” said Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) Senior Assistant General Manager Bryan Co in a press briefing on Tuesday, May 2. 

“These are all proactive efforts to make sure the CNS/ATM is reliable as an offshoot of what happened earlier this year,” he added, alluding to the technical glitches that paralyzed the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on January 1.

The New Year’s Day air traffic fiasco disrupted the flights of more than 78,000 passengers. A Senate investigation later found that there was no proper maintenance of air traffic equipment for the past two years. The senators also blasted CAAP for not repairing an AVR which had broken since August 2022 – although it is now set to be repaired on May 3.

The CAAP advisory stated that the maintenance activities will mainly affect flights at NAIA, Clark International Airport, and Mactan-Cebu International Airport, along with several flights from the other 42 CAAP commercially operated airports.

In the meantime, MIAA General Manager Cesar Chiong said that all airlines operating in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) were still finalizing plans for rescheduled flights in response to the scheduled maintenance.

Here are the affected flights so far.

Flights affected by May 3 maintenance

Only Philippine Airlines (PAL) has announced rescheduling of flights due to the May 3 maintenance activity.

“The CAAP does not expect any widespread disruption based on that maintenance activity. PAL just made the proactive effort to recalibrate their schedule in case magkaroon ng extension (an extension is needed),” Co said.

“But the other airlines, when we asked, they don’t have any changes in their flight schedule. As advised by CAAP, there will be no impact to flight operations for the AVR maintenance or change of the AVR by tomorrow,” he added.

These are the affected international and domestic Philippine Airlines flights on May 2 and May 3.

PAL advises passengers to avail of any of the following options:

• Rebook to the next available flight with seats available using the airline’s self- re-accommodation tool. Visit PAL’s website and use the self-re-accommodation tool by clicking the “Manage” tab and selecting the "Flight disruption” button. You may also click on this link to access the tool.
• Rebook or reroute your ticket to another flight with available space within 60 days from the original flight in the same booking class or higher within the same cabin class.
• Convert your ticket to travel credits equivalent to the unused base fare of your ticket. Voucher validity is one year from the date of issuance.
• Refund ticket without penalties, excluding Ticketing Service Charge.

Passengers may also view the real-time status of their PAL flight here.

Flights affected by May 17 maintenance

After previously advising that Philippine airspace will be closed for six hours on May 17 for a maintenance activity, CAAP has shortened the schedule.

“Based on careful process reviews and simulations, the maintenance activity will now be conducted in a shorter period of time on May 17, from 2:00 am to 4:00 am,” the CAAP said in a media advisory on Friday, May 5.

The earlier maintenance schedule, which was supposed to run from 12 midnight to 6 am, was expected to cause a bigger disruption, possibly affecting flights outside the six-hour range.

AirAsia Philippines

AirAsia guests affected by flight disruptions may opt to avail themselves of the standard recovery options, such as move flight, rebooking, credit account, or refund via AskBo on the airasia Superapp.

What we know so far: Labor Day power outage at NAIA Terminal 3

– Rappler.com