CALGARY – Airport officials are investigating why emergency systems failed following a power outage at the Calgary International Airport Saturday night.
The outage affected runway lighting forcing planes to either circle the skies or divert to other airports, inconveniencing hundreds of airline passengers.
The power outage began at 7:45p.m. and lasted one hour. Enmax says a faulty cable caused outages in the northeast quadrant of Calgary. The real problems followed when the airports emergency back-up system didn’t come online as planned.
“It did initiate as expected but we did run into some difficulty maintaining it which is why we closed the airport to ensure there was no safety issues,” says Jody Moseley, Calgary Airport Authority.
Approximately 20 flights were affected by the blackout. An air traveller Global News spoke with on Monday expressed concern that an emergency back-up for something as critical as runway lighting would fail so miserably.
“That’s why you have monthly tests or weekly tests, there must be a frequency of tests. You would expect to have a few systems in place.”
In an ironic twist, the outage happened shortly before and during Earth Hour. As part of a planned event, the airport did join others around the world to help reduce energy consumption by turning off non-essential lights inside the terminal.
“Runway lighting is absolutely essential and it’s important for us to maintain so it was not part of the earth hour experience that was for sure,” says Moseley.
Mosley says it could be some time before an explanation is found and repairs are made.
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