THE VIEW FROM RIZAL
DR. JUN YNARES
We can only commiserate with Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista.
He has not finished his first year in office and the former Philippine Airlines president already had a taste of a controversy that is so prominent that it may have taken the limelight away from news items regarding the start of the new year and the death of the world’s first Pope Emeritus.
Secretary Bautista took the hit arising out of the misery of thousands of local and international air travelers right on the first day of 2023. We do not know if this is a first, but as far as we can remember, never before Jan. 1, 2023, had the air navigation system of the country conked out and turned the entire Philippine airspace into a virtual no-fly zone.
It was a failure of technology.
Observers in the know were quick to absolve the transportation secretary. They point out that the fiasco was a disaster waiting to happen, given the fact that the critical parts of an uninterruptible power supply system were due for replacement a long time ago – even before Secretary Bautista had an inkling that he would one day become the country’s transportation czar. Add to that the fact that many of the vital components of the air traffic management system were supposed to be purchased in 2010 and took some eight years before they were finally installed.
We support that view – Secretary Bautista is not to be blamed.
We also support the view that a blame game/witch-hunt for the culprit should only be tertiary in importance. The national government must first resolve the technology failure and make sure that it learns the lessons and never forgets them.
The primary lesson is this: Air transportation is heavily dependent on technology.
When technology fails, air transportation could ground to a total halt.
The woe that our traveling countrymen experienced on New Year’s Day is not exclusive to the experience of Filipinos. We recall that in 2017, United States air travel was severely affected when technology failed. First, United Airlines had to ground all its flights for nearly three hours due to trouble with its communications system which pilots use to receive information.
A week later, Delta Airlines suffered a breakdown in its information technology system. It had to cancel some 280 flights causing widespread confusion, anger, and delays among its passengers for two days in January of that year.
The year before, 2016, Southwest Airlines suffered a similar debacle.
The woe is not exclusive to the airline industry. Many of our countrymen experienced similarly high levels of anxiety and inconvenience following what appeared to be a crash in the IT system of one of the country’s biggest banks. There was confusion as withdrawals never made by clients started appearing in their online statements. Interestingly, the same bank suffered a similar glitch some three years ago when its system failed following what they said was undue human intervention.
When technology fails, our lives stop.
We cannot communicate, cannot travel, cannot access our money.
Such situations also create distrust as well as fear. We have now just realized how dependent our lives have become on technology.
The lesson is that technology is only as reliable as the human beings managing them.
Technology is useful only when it is reliable. Its reliability depends on the skills and the level of commitment of the human beings involved in the operation of the systems using technology.
Three things have proven to be vital based on these experiences: back-up, contingency and maintenance.
Back-up means there is a stand-by replacement when the main device fails. Contingency means the technology managers know exactly what other options are available then the system fails. Maintenance means the system is regularly checked and its parts are cleaned and kept in tip-top shape, thus delaying their deterioration and extending their life and value.
When technology fails and our lives stop, we need two things: information and assurances.
We need information on what options we have in the face of the failure of systems we have learned to rely and be dependent on. We need assurances that there is a back-up, and that there is a contingency plan.
In the absence of these, agencies and business entities whose systems failure cause our lives to stop should not wonder why we become angry. Anger is our collective response to the inconvenience and interruption in our lives that the failure of the technology they manage causes us.
Secretary Bautista is a veteran in the transportation industry. He is in a good position to ensure that the New Year technology fiasco would never happen again.
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