Chinedu Eze
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has explained that maintenance work on the runway of the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport forced it to divert flights to other airports.
THISDAY learnt that flights were diverted to Lagos and Abuja, due to safety concerns, as airfield lighting at the runway in Kano malfunctioned during on-going maintenance.
FAAN, in a statement signed by the Director, Public Affairs & Consumer Protection, Abdullahi Yakubu-Funtua, explained that the airfield maintenance team of the agency observed that the runway lighting was not coming on after the scheduled daily maintenance work of replacing old and weak airfield cables with new ones at runway 06/24 (Kano airport runway).
According to the agency, the maintenance team immediately initiated fault finding procedures along the cable route to identify the problem and restore power to the airfield lighting circuit.
According to the statement, it was however observed that the entire runway circuit was affected, leading to the failure of the Runway 06/24 edge light, the taxiway alpha edge light, PAPI (Precision Approach Part Indicator) and signage.
“As at 1900hrs local time, the fault had yet to be isolated and power supply to the runway could not be restored, leaving the runway in a total blackout which affected night operations. So, arriving flights had to be diverted to alternate airports.
‘At 2300hrs, after all efforts to restore power supply to the runway failed, Operations department initiated a NOTAM (notice to airmen) action for the closure of runway 06/24 between the hours of 2300hrs on 15th July to 07:00hrs of 16th July, 2023,” it added.
FAAN stated that it regretted any inconvenience caused by the diversion of the two Kano-bound aircraft to Lagos, due to the unserviceability of the runway lights of runway 06/24,” the agency said.
“Night operations have since resumed as new cables were installed on Sunday, 16 July, 2023 leading to restoration of all runway lights before commencement of night operations,” the agency said.
