Power surge shuts down operations at Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport

Wednesday, 14 March 2012 12:13

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There was complete shut down of operations at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, last night, following a power surge which damage the air field lighting, including taxi and runway lights.

Consequently, all in-bound flights into the airport were reportedly diverted to other airports, while flights schedule for take off were cancelled.

Vanguard gathered last night that the incident, which occurred at about 7:00pm, led also to the cancellation of a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta, U.S.

Also, all other international flights out of the airport were cancelled as a result, as most passengers were said to have returned home, while transit passengers were checked into hotels in accordance with international civil aviation regulations.

It was learnt that airport engineers had assumed that what happened was merely an outage by the Power Holdings Company of Nigeria, but got the shocker when the airfield lighting failed to come after the generating sets at the airport were switched on.

The consequence is that there may be no night operations at the airport for days, as it would take quite sometime to get the equipment fixed.

Only last weekend, power outage at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, crippled operations in some sections of the terminal building.

The situation had, however, been restored, after the technical fault that caused the problem was fixed.

General Manager, Public Affairs of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAA Mr. Akin Olukunle, could not be reached last night as calls pulled through his mobile phone remained unanswered.