Mayhem at the Saipan Airport

Last Thursday’s three-hour power outage at the Saipan International Airport certainly created havoc. It cut to the heart of what we should never do to our tourists: give them a bad experience while on our soil.

For some, this was their last experience of a vacation they had saved up and looked forward to for months. They took home a memory and a story we wish they would not tell their friends.

The power outage at the airport was caused when CUC’s generators did not work and/or what is now a typical rolling black out hit in the wee hours of the morning when we receive vital night flights from Japan and Korea. Saipan International Airport’s two backup generators then failed, delaying two flights and stranding hundreds of passengers inside a sweltering airport.

The outage bogged down the computerized system at the Arrivals and Departure areas, preventing TSA from screening baggage. The airport is the first place our tourists will see of the CNMI and it doesn’t bode well for the islands when our visitors can’t land due to the lack of runway lights. We feel especially sorry for the tired and frustrated tourists who had already checked out of hotels during the wee hours of the morning and were trying to get home.

This situation embarrassed not just the Commonwealth, but our partners in the tourism industry: the airlines, the tour agents, the hotels, the airport’s tenants, other businesses and all those who were sending off or receiving guests. Many people were placed in the untenable position of having to apologize for a lack of investment in preventive maintenance and proper planning.

Asiana Airlines’s General Manager for the Regional Sales Office in Saipan summed up the situation thus: “It was really a very terrible experience. It was a very difficult time for us, especially the passengers.”

Then acting CPA Executive Director immediately expressed regret over the incident and appealed for everyone’s understanding. But unfortunately, CPA should have seen this coming. This was not the first time that such a situation has happened and we should have anticipated further blackouts. The backup generators at the airport went down several months ago, while repair work reportedly started only last month.

Worse, repairs on airport’s generators are not expected to be completed until the end of November or first week of December. With CUC’s generators on the blink, these repairs at our airport should have been a top priority. CPA is already under an emergency declaration due to a lack of management, and expediting the repairs is just one more justification for it.

With an economy that is barely limping along, we should try doubly hard to ensure that the lone industry that’s keeping the CNMI from flying apart at the seams is well supported. We hope that the new board of directors and new executive director at the Commonwealth Ports Authority will jump on this issue as the top priority of the day.