More than P13 billion is needed to upgrade the country's air traffic management which the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) describes as an outdated system that needs to be upgraded to a better system.
Currently, the CAAP is using the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management, or the CNS/ATM system, which was introduced to the civilian aviation sector in 2010.
It took eight years and P13 billion borrowed from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) before the CNS/ATM system was used by the Philippine aviation sector, according to Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime Bautista.
And with the technical glitch on the CNS/ATM that occurred on Sunday, Jan. 1. at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), Bautista said there is a need to modernize the system being used by the CAAP.
"We can still use it but we need to upgrade this to a better system. So if we talk about the budget, it's more than P13B billion now considering we had this five years ago. We will need a huge amount of money for this," Bautista told reporters in a press briefing on Sunday.
The technical glitch, which the CAAP traced to power outage on Sunday morning and eventually to the power surge that damaged equipment on the Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC), affected around 65,000 domestic and international airline passengers from nearly 300 flights,
The ATMC serves as the facility for controlling and overseeing all inbound and outbound flights and overflights within the Philippine airspace. It went down at 9:49 a.m. on Sunday due to a power outage that resulted in loss of communication, radio, radar, and internet.
The system glitch at the CAAP-run Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) was fully restored at 7:45 p.m. on Sunday.
The upgrade of the air traffic management system in the country is deemed essential especially that Marcos administration is banking on the full revival of the tourism sector as part of the economic recovery from the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
So how outdated is the Philippines' outdated air traffic management system?
Bautista said: "If you compare it with Singapore for one, there is a big difference. They are at least 10 years ahead of us."