Northwest’s station manager for Guam and Saipan, Richard Parsons, said the meeting with CPA has been set this week.
On Sunday dawn, 216 passengers of the airlines were stranded on their planes after a power outage hit the airport area.
“Unfortunately, the combination of a power outage and the unavailability of both airport generators early Sunday morning resulted in inconvenience to our arriving customers,” Parsons said.
The airline, he added, regrets “this inconvenience and sincerely hope that customers thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of their time on Saipan.”
Last year, 297 passengers of Northwest were stranded for nearly three hours on the plane due to a power outage at the airport.
Parsons said Sunday’s Northwest Flight 77 from Nagoya landed 20 minutes early at 1:05 a.m. and the passengers began deplaning through the portable air stairs at 1:11 a.m. The plane carried 65 passengers.
Flight 100 from Narita landed 11 minutes early at 1:09 a.m., but its deplaning was delayed for close to 40 minutes due to the power outage. The flight had 151 passengers.
Parsons said all their Saipan flights this weekend departed on time.
“We will be meeting with CPA this week to discuss the current generator situation as well as to review existing contingency plans in order to protect our customers from such experiences in the future,” Parsons said.
CPA has two main generators but both units have broken down.
CPA is now using a 150-kw generator that can only provide power to the runway, the navigational lights and the instrument landing system.
CPA, which remains under the governor’s control, has yet to announce when its main generators will be operational.
Press Secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. said the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is committed to provide power to the airport.
“The incident over the weekend was an aberration because of the transformer loss at a garment factory in As Terlaje — CUC will prioritize power for the airport,” Reyes said, adding that “if the Legislature approves funds for additional power generation capacity, CUC will be in a much better position to provide continuous power to the airport as well as the rest of the CNMI.”
Reyes said should some CUC engines fail, every effort will be made to keep the airport operational.
“The administration will provide every assistance possible, preferably with the support of the Legislature,” the press secretary added.
