MANILA -- President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has ordered the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to fast-track the arrangement for maintenance provider Sumitomo-Thales that will modernize the country’s aviation safety system, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said.

In a briefing on Tuesday, Bautista said he met with the chief executive to provide updates on the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) systems glitch last January 1.

The DOTr secretary said his team made recommendations on “how we will move forward.”

“The President is very much aware of what happened, and he supports our recommendation to implement future requirements necessary for the upgrade or improvement of the CNS/ATM (communications, navigation, and surveillance/air traffic management) system, which includes hardware and software maintenance, hardware replacement, ultimate fallback system for software redundancy and the need for an independent CNS/ATM in a separate location,” Bautista explained.

In an interview on Monday, President Marcos said his administration has no plans to pursue the privatization of NAIA.

“You cannot privatize an airport, to begin with. A private firm cannot own the airport,” Marcos pointed out.

The chief executive noted that during their trip to New York, the Philippine delegation met with the group that was running Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom and asked if they could come to the Philippines to help with airport maintenance concerns.

“They were here last week to look at the operations of the airport, and especially since we had that problem on New Year’s Day. At most, we will have a management contract,” Marcos said. (PND)