Aviation decline in the Philippines continues

This weekend two times information leaked into public space:

Aviation safety is paramount

The Business Mirror wrote: Don’t look now, but if you’re an airline passenger who arrived from abroad last Thursday from morning until early the next day, you have to thank your lucky stars—along with the good weather and competent pilots—that you managed to land in one piece to the welcoming arms of your loved ones.

Why? According to our Ninoy Aquino International Airport reporter, the facility’s main navigational and landing aid, called VOR (very high frequency omnidirectional radio range), conked out at 10:40 a.m. on Thursday and was expected to be restored only by 8 a.m. the next day.

This is the third time the landing aid had gone off the air since last month, according to airport officials. However, no flights were diverted to Clark or Cebu since the weather remained clear and visibility was considered good enough to allow safe landing and takeoff without the VOR.

Last month, on October 9, the VOR also went off the air for two hours but was later repaired. In 2008 the Manila VOR and Instrument Landing System went off the air for two months, causing dozens of flights to be diverted.

The latest outage couldn’t have come at a bad time: members of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) were in town to evaluate whether to restore the Category 1 status of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).

Not surprisingly, CAAP flunked the review. But that had nothing to do with the VOR outage, airport officials said.

Read the full article here 

Goodbye CAAP, Hello CAACI?

The Philippineairspace blog found: The Philippines largest carrier may be going to United States of America and Europe after all with or without the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAAP) support or regulatory license when push comes to shove on Philippine Airlines (PAL) US$10 billion expansion plans.

Read the full article here