Power outage disrupts flights at Abuja airport

A power outage that lasted for over two hours on Sunday left hundreds of passengers stranded at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. Read more

Our correspondent gathered that the outage and the subsequent disruption of flight activities was as a result of the packing up of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria’s transformer supplying electricity to the Arik Hall wing of the airport.

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria confirmed the incident to our correspondent, but said the outage was rectified after the generators had been switched on.

It, however, did not specify the number of flights that were delayed, but maintained that the situation was promptly addressed.

Sources at the airport, however, said about 60 incoming and outgoing flights were delayed.

One of the sources said the development left hundreds of passengers frustrated as many flights were unable to take off as scheduled.

 “The situation lasted for about three hours and no meaningful explanation was given,” an aggrieved official, who pleaded not to be named because he was not authorised to speak on the subject, said.

 “Why must it take this long before they put on the generators? We know PHCN is used to doing this, but we must be prepared at all times because outages like this do not only leave the passengers stranded, but also affect the businesses of airlines,” the official said.

Reacting to the development, the spokesperson, FAAN, Abuja airport, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu, told our correspondent that the outage occurred around 8am but stressed that the situation was rectified as quickly as possible by the agency’s engineers.

She said, “There was a problem in Module 8, which is the Arik Hall. There was power outage there and it had to do with the transformer, but the generators were put on. It didn’t take so long for the power to be restored.

 “In fact, I just finished speaking with the manager and he confirmed that by 10am, everything was sorted out. It actually happened in the morning around 8am, but it was rectified not so long after that. So, the fact is that there was outage but it was rectified.”

The spokesperson of Arik Air, Mr. Banji Ola, told our correspondent that the outage affected the airline’s flights, but could not give the number of flights that did not take off during the period.

 “I can confirm to you that there was an outage in the morning hours of today (Sunday), which affected all our flights out of Abuja. The flight disruption was for the duration of the outage, but I can’t tell you the number of flights that were affected,” he said.

Culled from Punch newspaper