The management of Cebu Pacific Air (CEB) clarified that their aircraft, which reportedly got stuck on the grassy area of the taxiway at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on Friday, was not operating a fight.
CEB said there was no landing or taking off, no flight number, no passengers, no flight crew, but was only repositioning or was in a parking procedure when it got stuck on the ground.
NAIA flights affected due to taxiway incursion
"Hindi ito galing sa isang flight. Nangyari ito habang inililipat ang eroplano (It's not from the flight. It happened while the plane was being moved)," CEB said in a statement.
The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) earlier announced that an Airbus A321 aircraft of Cebu Pacific slightly swerved onto the grassy portion of the taxiway "early this morning white repositioning from Bay 111 to Bay 122A of NAIA Terminal 3.
There were no passengers or crew on board and no injuries at the time of the incident.
The MIAA Aircraft Recovery team is currently in the process of extracting the aircraft from the grassy area.
The authority added that due to the incident, Bays 110 - 12 are temporarily unavailable for use, which means that only three parking spaces are available for wide-body aircraft.
The incident also caused delayed flights due to the disabled aircraft.
There are six arrival flights that have been delayed as of 9:30 a.m.:
- United Airlines (UA189) San Francisco - Manila
- Scoot (TR396) Singapore - Manila
- Emirates (EK336) Dubai- Manila
- Cebu Pacific (5J050) Melbourne - Manila
- Cebu Pacific (5J309) Guangzhou - Manila
- Jetstar (3K763) Singapore - Manila
Seven departing flights were also delayed:
- Cebu Pacific (5J110) Manila - Hong Kong
- All Nippon Airways (NH820) Manila - Narita
- Cathay Pacific (CX912) Manila - Hong Kong
- Jetstar (3K763) Manila - Kansai
- Emirates (EK337) Manila - Dubai
- Scoot (TR397) Manila -Singapore
- United Airlines (UA190) Manila -San Francisco
CEB management is addressing ramp congestion and operational delays due to the disabled aircraft being removed by MIAA personnel.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonNews #NAIA #MIAA #Aviation #CebuPacificAir