Thursday 26 September 2013

Faulty power cable throws Lagos airport into darkness

Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos

The Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos was thrown into darkness on Tuesday and Wednesday due to a burnt power cable.
Findings by our correspondent on Wednesday revealed that some facilities such as the chillers were not functioning at the airport due to the problem.
As a result of the power cut, airlines operating from the international terminal resorted to manual check-in of passengers as all their systems packed up.
Also, profilers resorted to the use of torchlight to authenticate the profile of departing passengers, while workers on the fifth floor of the airport also had to use torchlight to access their offices.
The outage affected the two foreign carriers, which landed simultaneously on Wednesday evening at the airport, Air France and Lufthansa Airlines.
It also led to delays at the baggage reclaim area as arriving passengers spent over an hour before they could retrieve their luggage.
However, in a statement on Wednesday, the General Manager, Corporate Communications, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr. Yakubu Dati, said power supply had been restored.
He said power was restored on Wednesday.
Dati said in the statement, “The power outage, which mostly affected the ‘E’ Wing of the terminal, was caused by an underground armoured cable fault, leading to billowing of smoke in the affected area.
“The outage did not affect operations at the terminal, but some services were temporarily shut down to enable our engineers effect repairs to the damaged cables.
“FAAN regrets any inconvenience the brief power outage caused airline passengers and operators at the terminal, and we wish to assure the public that such power outage will soon become a thing of the past when the power improvement project at the airport, involving the installation of six ultra modern generators, is inaugurated.”

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