Solon on NAIA crisis: 'We need to hold people accountable'
Albay 2nd district Rep. Joey Salceda said that the people who messed up and caused the disastrous technical glitch at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) over the weekend ought to be held accountable.
“I mean, I can’t say this is force majeure. You can foresee power outages. You can foresee surges in air traffic," Salceda, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said in a statement on Monday, Jan. 2.
"Someone was at fault here,” he underscored.
At the same time, Salceda said, "There is a clear need to update or change policies to reflect what passengers are entitled to when the government is at fault."
“But beyond these policy changes, we need to hold some people accountable, too – so this never happens again," the economist-solon said.
He noted that under the DOTC-DTI Joint Administrative Order (JAO) No. 1 s. 2012, “In case the air carrier cancels the flight because of force majeure, safety and/or security reasons, as certified by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, a passenger shall have the right to be reimbursed for the full value of the fare.”
The power outage at NAIA on Sunday, Jan. 1 caused the cancellation of 282 flights. On Monday, Jan. 2, another 48 flights were cancelled. Some 56,000 passengers were affected Sunday, and another 10,000 Monday for a total of 66,000.
Salceda added that this system-wide issue, “which is bad enough as it is, and terrible considering the rush to get back to work after the holidays, should never happen again. I don’t think JAO 1 took it into account, either.”
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“So, I am asking my friend Secretary Bautista to look into how the CAAP can compensate passengers hassled by these delays. Passengers pay a terminal fee, and airlines pay fees to the CAAP. They failed both sectors, in this case. And there’s a real financial damage to both passengers and airlines as a result of this failure," he said.
"There’s also a need to see whether the failure could have been avoided had the CAAP complied faithfully with, say, the State Safety Program for air operations," Salceda further said.