Tugade, Monreal asked to resign for ’embarrassment’ at NAIA
TRANSPORTATION Secretary Arthur Tugade and General Manager Ed Monreal should quit their posts over the “international embarrassment” at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) caused by an accident on its main runway last week.
Rep. Winston Castelo of Quezon City, chairman of the Committee on Metro Manila Development at the House of Representatives, said that incident involving a Xiamen Air plane that skidded off the NAIA runway late Thursday night and the government’s response to the situation that stranded thousands of passengers and forced the cancellation or diversion of domestic and international flights was an “embarrassment” and unacceptable.
It took NAIA management a day after the incident to coordinate with airline companies about the cancellation of flights and two days to remove the stalled Xiamen aircraft.
NAIA is under the supervision of the Department of Transportation (DoTr), which Tugade heads.
“Heads will roll here. We cannot be an international embarrassment. The one running the airport should be held accountable: administratively, if not criminally. There was lack of foresight. There was no contingency, no crane [to lift the Xiamen aircraft]and we even had to outsource the crane,” Castelo said in a news conference.
“It would be premature [to say this]in the absence of investigation, but my contention here is that there should be resignations out of delicadeza,” Castelo said.
Eunice Fernando, a Filipino overseas worker/hotelier whose flight to Oman was delayed for 33 hours, lamented that NAIA, an international airport at that, has no crisis and communication plan.
“It took them two days to remove the Xiamen aircraft. Why is that we don’t have a crane to lift that grounded plane in the first place? NAIA is an international airport, not just any other building, and yet we had to rent a crane,” Fernando told The Manila Times, referring to equipment borrowed by airport authorities from an owner of a private restaurant in Manila.
“Nobody wanted the incident to happen, of course, but they handled the situation very poorly. Nobody was around to give us answers. Why not make prompt announcements of flight delays and cancellations? They waited for the passengers to pack the airport before making announcements. There were no screens to tell you when is your rescheduled flight, where is your boarding gate, or if you are boarding in the first place,” Fernando added.
Worse, Fernando cited that the airport hardly had anything to offer the stranded passengers.
“The airport has not enough facilities. I only spotted three places where you can eat and people have no place to sleep or even rest. If you live nearby, then you can go home but how about those scores of passengers who live way, way far from the airport?” Fernando said. LLANESCA PANTI
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