Airspace shutdown to take 6 hours

Maintenance work on the country’s Air Traffic Management System (ATMS) will prevent the recurrence of power outages like the one that led to the shutdown of the Philippine airspace last Jan. 1, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) said on Thursday. Caap spokesperson Eric Apolonio said the second phase of repairs on May 17 involves the replacement of the uninterruptible power supply and other upgrades in the ATMS. The repairs and upgrading will only last around 4.5 hours but Apolonio said Caap extended the suspension of aviation operations to six hours for good measure. The only flights allowed during the suspension are the manually operated ones such as military flights and emergency flights, he said. —JEROME ANING

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