MANILA – More than 61,000 passengers of Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific were affected by the Xiamen Air incident that prompted the 36-hour closure of Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s Runway 06/24.
Both airlines said the passengers included those in canceled, delayed, and diverted flights – both domestic and overseas.
“Over 30,000 affected passengers: 87 cancellations and 21 diverted flights affecting 4,000 passengers,” PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna told GMA News Online on Tuesday.
Xiamen Air flight MF8667 skidded off Runway 06/24 around 11 p.m. on Thursday, August 16, supposedly due to the rain.
The incident compelled other airlines to cancel and divert many flights to Clark International Airport, some 95 kilometers north of Manila, and inconvenienced tens of thousands of airline passengers as the international runway was closed for nearly 36 hours.
In the case of Cebu Pacific, director for Corporate Communications Charo Logarta-Lagamon said that around 31,000 passengers were displaced “on canceled flights, not counting those on diverted flights or those severely delayed.”
“Total for Ceb is over 31,000 passengers …” Lagamon said.
Runway 06/24 reopened at noon on Saturday, August 18. The disabled aircraft and some of its parts that littered the runway were removed from the runway around 2:30 a.m. that same day.
Villaluna said PAL is absorbing the cost of the operational disruption as a result of the incident.
While Cebu Pacific is focusing on normalizing operations and assisting affected passengers, it said that holding Xiamen Air accountable for financial damages, revenue losses, and other financial damages “can be studied later.”
Manila International Airport Authority general manager Ed Monreal has said other airlines may file separate cases against Xiamen Air to recover their own losses.
His early estimate of the damage, expenses, and revenue loss incurred by the MIAA from the Xiamen Air incident was P15 million. (GMA News)
