Frustrated passengers turned back before flights resume

Hundreds of angry passengers were turned back from the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport’s holding area and were shuttled back to hotels after some airline flights were cancelled yesterday morning due to the Typhoon Nangka and ongoing difficulties with the CNMI-wide network communications outage yesterday morning, airport and airline officials told Saipan Tribune.

Around 1am, around 300 Jeju Air passengers were left stranded at the airport due to a cancelled flight that morning, a Jeju Air official said.

Jeju Air passengers line up to check-in for their “rescue” flight at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport yesterday afternoon. (Dennis B. Chan)

At 6:45pm yesterday, Commonwealth Ports Authority executive director Maryann Lizama said the Jeju “rescue” flight was arriving at 8:40pm.

She said a regular flight would arrive at 3:40am today, and another rescue flight at 5:20am.

Star Marianas Airlines operations were ceased as of yesterday evening, according to Lizama. She said they had earlier been flying from Tinian to Saipan only to bring stranded passengers to the airport.

As for contact with sister airports on Tinian and Rota, Lizama said they were still not able to dial through as they always get a busy signal. But she said she had the utmost confidence they were running things efficiently.

Jeju Air’s David Cha, who arrived on Saipan through Asiana Airlines in the morning, told Saipan Tribune yesterday afternoon they would continue normal operations.

Cha said each flight has a 186-seat capacity and flights were not full.

He said around 300 passengers were stranded yesterday. Hotels were called and passengers were sent back to their hotels, he said.

Lizama separately said yesterday afternoon that the stranded passengers waited in the airport’s holding room.

She said she instructed Jeju Air’s station manager to talk to the passengers.

She said they were trying to get hotels for the passengers, but hotels said they would only accept cash payments.

The CNMI-wide network communications outage halted all wireless service yesterday, causing businesses to turn down payments in credit.

Lizama said she then contacted acting governor Ralph DLG Torres for help in contacting hotels because “there were toddlers and kids” just waiting at the airport.

Lizama said Torres called them back with arrangements for hotels to accept stranded passengers.

She said passengers were brought back down and screened by PBC and shuttled back to their hotels.

Meanwhile, Asian Airlines flew three flights on Wednesday, flight 626 to Inchon, flight 623 to Inchon, and flight 608 to Busan, South Korea, airline staff said.

Lizama confirmed all three Asiana flights arrived and all three flights departed Wednesday.

Asiana Airlines’ flight 626 to Inchon was set to depart/arrive from/on Saipan at 3:20am.

Delta Airlines announced yesterday morning they would operate flight 297 as scheduled at 4:30pm yesterday.

Delta had cancelled flights and closed their office on Wednesday due to the CNMI-wide network outage halting all electronic transmissions.

As of 6:40pm, afternoon Cape Air/United Airlines was not yet operating due to the network outage.

A reported “glitch” in United’s system nation-wide was said to have halted operations across the nation. But a Cape Air supervisor said they could not say how this “glitch” affected their system because the CNMI-wide network communications outage was still ongoing.

Lizama also said she did not have information on how this “glitch” affected Cape Air.