Everybody but himself is to blame for last weekend’s chaotic five-hour blackout at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). That’s the thinking of general manager Angel Aquino Honrado. He has just returned from sick leave (gout) since mid-March, in work sacrifice beyond retirement age at the facility named after his democracy icon-uncle. Why, he’s still there after a six-month absence due to heart bypass two years back. Fault for the mess can only lie with those less patriotic.

First of Honrado’s culprits is the electricity distributor Meralco. Power had shut down at 8:40 p.m. Saturday, plunging the new Terminal-3 into darkness till 2 a.m. Sunday. Meralco acknowledged a momentary 45-second trip-off at its airport substation, after which power automatically switched back on. It was a fail-safe mechanism, known to NAIA engineers, upon detecting an overload inside the airport. As residential or industrial customers know, power firms ensure supply only up to the usage meter, beyond which the wirings, loads, even emergency flashlights are the responsibility of the former. Not in Honrado’s books, though. That only the airport had no lights that night was all Meralco’s fault, purportedly for not restoring it in a jiffy.

Second in Honrado’s blame list are the darned standby power generators. For some strange reason, they didn’t automatically kick on upon shutdown of regular power. Three hours later fresh fuel was put in, followed by manual cranking. Still one of the 10 wouldn’t run. Engr. Octavio Lina, Honrado’s handpicked manager for Terminal-3, wondered why during a talk-radio interview Monday afternoon. That never happened when they tested it a year ago, he whined. Owners of home generators test their units every month, commercial users every week; no fuel turns stale, no engine gets stuck up. Not Honrado’s engineers.

Third in Honrado’s list are Philippine flag carriers Cebu-Pacific and PAL Express, and five foreign airlines operating at Terminal-3. Their central computers and check-in links had bogged down, so departing passengers couldn’t be processed. Arriving passengers couldn’t be unloaded either, because the darkened taxiways and parking bays were congested with planes just landed or unable to take off. No public address system updated the 17,000 panicky people. And airlines reps had the temerity to ask three questions: (1) Where were Honrado, his senior deputy Vicente Guerzon, and Lina? (2) At 9:40 p.m., an hour into the blackout, shouldn’t the NAIA activate a crisis management committee under the Airport Emergency Response Plan and the rules of the United Nations-International Air Transport Association? (To that, assistant manager for operations Ricardo Medalla supposedly replied that only the missing Honrado could order so.) (3) Could NAIA direct arriving planes to the less congested but also affected Terminal-1, so the passengers could be given more comfort? (No way, they were told.)

For all that, Honrado allegedly asked back why the airlines had no standby power supplies of their own, instead of relying on NAIA. The airport management, he curtly reminded them, is a “mere coordinator” of the 36 government agencies, dozens of airlines and charterers, and hundreds of restaurant and PX concessionaires, ground handling, porterage, and other private firms there. Senators recently had scolded Honrado for that hazy view of his role, when they investigated his inability to stop the bullet-planting extortion racket at NAIA. He clearly didn’t believe them when they said he was in fact a “super-GM” by virtue of a presidential order during the past admin and the NAIA being an autonomous authority merely attached to the transport department for supervision. Yet when it comes to dealing with airlines, Honrado deems himself almighty, threatening them with confiscation of aircraft for non-payment of interests on imagined overdue accounts that he doesn’t even detail to them.

Fourth of the culprits are those “other” airport agencies and businesses. Honrado blames them for having no standby power supply for the security x-rays at Terminal-3’s entrance and boarding area. Also, for poor emergency lighting at the food kiosks. As well, the ground servicer, for lost baggage due to manual sorting as baggage claim conveyor belts were inoperable.

If he had his way, Honrado would blame the National Police and the passenger pickups and drop-offs for the traffic jam to and from the NAIA that harrowing night. All those had inconvenienced not so much the passengers but the sacrificing Honrado.

Sharing his view is fellow-Air Force retiree Rodante Joya, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Authority. Joya said in a separate radio show that the NAIA cannot be held liable for the hundreds of flight delays and cancellations, the extra costs of rebooking, and the prolonged parking charges on airplanes. No harm to the NAIA reputation among airlines and travelers, he added.

The old fogeys do not grasp the security implications of the incident. Four days hence, Honrado has yet to pinpoint the cause of the power overload at Terminal-3. “The incident adds to the chaos and instability in light of global terrorism,” Sen. Nancy Binay said. “It should not be taken for granted because thousands of lives are at stake.”

To think that NAIA during the blackout was at the height of an anti-terror alert. Middle Eastern carriers had requested the alert due to recent airport attacks by the ISIS and Taliban, including in Brussels and Bombay, according to Leoncio Nakpil of the Airline Operators Council. “What if this intentionally was perpetrated by groups out to test our airport personnel’s reaction to attacks, and to identify vulnerable areas,” he remarked as a former airline security officer.

The NAIA “seems eager to regain the ‘world’s worst airport’ title that it lost only in 2015,” Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago twitted Honrado. The facility in 2011-2013 topped the “World’s Worst” list of the online travel website “Guide to Sleeping in Airports,” which rates convenience, comfort, cleanliness, and customer service. In 2014, NAIA “improved” to fourth worst.

Expect those warnings to fall on deaf ears. Seeing nothing wrong with his work style, Honrado will not change. Not even a reported tsk-tsk by President Noynoy Aquino, Honrado’s cousin-appointer and son of Ninoy Aquino, will make the ex-general shape up. P-Noy took Honrado’s side against the public outrage at the airport extortions. In again treating him with kid gloves, he will reap the consequences of their common general mismanagement of the country and the airport.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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