Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 11) — The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) on Sunday confirmed that a lapse in procedure among its personnel caused the power interruption at the Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) last Friday.
In a statement, Meralco said personnel of its wholly owned subsidiary MServ were conducting testing activities at NAIA Terminal 3’s electrical facilities, which is part of the technical audit to improve the country’s main air gateway, when the 39-minute power interruption occurred.According to an incident report submitted to airport authorities, an MServ personnel accidentally left grounding conductors attached to an electrical equipment during a testing activity, which triggered an electrical fault at 12:50 p.m. that subsequently caused the power interruption of NAIA Terminal 3’s facilities on June 9,” Meralco explained.
A grounding conductor is a wire connected to the earth which usually provides a low-resistance path for electrical current to flow into connected electrical equipment.
According to the firm, the power was restored at 1:29 p.m. of the same day.
Meralco also apologized for the inconvenience caused by the latest power interruption, which came a little over a month after the hours-long outage on May 1, and five months since the NAIA technical glitch that affected thousands of passengers on New Year’s Day.
We also assure MIAA (Manila International Airport Authority), the Department of Transportation (DOTr), and the commuting public that measures are being undertaken to prevent a similar incident from happening again,” it said.
