Power outage cripples operations at Nigeria’s busiest airport

…FAAN explains incident

The MurtalaMuhammed International Airport, Lagos was thrown into darkness and confusion Saturday night with the effects of the blackout paralysing activities at the nation’s busiest airport last night.

Many travellers departing the airport went through stress as the power outage affected the entire gamut of air travel causing passengers to disembark aircraft with a ramp among other anomalies.

Daily Times learnt that the power outage which started at 10pm affected passengers of KLM, Virgin Atlantic, Arik Air’s London and United States flights, Air Maroc and Delta Air Lines British Airways, Air France, South African Airways with passengers boarding the aircraft with either touch lights or phone lights.

In response to the unfortunate incident at the airport, General Manager Public Affairs Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Yakubu Dati explained,”There was a power outage from the Power Company  and the airport was on our independent power supply.”

“However, when power was restored, the surge adversely affected the K16 Transformer that serves the Air-bridges and rendered them unserviceable. This adversely affected operations of departing flights. The heavy rainfall further delayed attempts by engineers to effect repairs immediately.”

It was learnt that last that the departure lounge of the MMIA was in darkness and airlines officials deployed gas-powered lanterns and battery-powered flashlights to check-in passengers and walk them through the boarding gates.

Passengers who were scheduled to board also had to scrabbled their ways through the pitch black lounge to the boarding gates into the aircraft.

The FAAN spokesman, however, apologised stating, “FAAN wishes to apologise to passengers, airlines and the general public for the inconvenience caused by this development as efforts are being made to find a lasting solution.”