Binay: PH travel now becoming an unpleasant, frustrating experience for travelers
Senator Nancy Binay lamented that the power outage at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 is sending a message that the Philippines has become an unpleasant and frustrating experience for travelers.
"Only a few months after the New Year power outage that crippled aviation and airport operations, we are again in every social media portal, news channel and newspaper across the world,’’ Binay, chairperson of the Senate tourism committee, said.
The lady lawmaker said that today’s (Monday, May 1) incident pointed to a string of inadequacies that showed how weak, bad and vulnerable our airports are.
"Para bang tuwing nasa kalagitnaan ang lahat ng long weekend, laging may aberya na nangyayari sa ating mga airport (What is happening is that after a long weekend, there are incidents at the airport) —almost always, passengers have to deal with bad airline experiences, plus the string of technical glitches. Our gateway to the Philippines has literally become a port of inconvenience to travelers and tourists,’’ she added.
"What happened to the backup and redundant systems that the DOTr (Department of Transportation) and MIAA (Manila International Airport Authority) promised to upgrade?,’’ she asked.
"Yes, we expect a certain amount of chaos during holidays and peak seasons. But now, outages and technical glitches seem to have become a common occurrence at our airports--'di na tayo natuto (we have not learned),’’ she added.