Power outage at Lagos airport
SIR: The attention of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has been drawn to a front page story titled "Outage at Lagos Airport raises security fears", in your publication of October 7,2004, which reported the power outage at the international runway of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Ikeja on October 2, 2004.
We wish to state that this rejoinder would not have been necessary if that news report had been accurate and well-intended. We, therefore, owe it as a duty to put the records straight concerning that incident with a mind to erasing whatever wrong impressions that could have been created in the minds of the public by that story.
It is a fact that there was an outage of the edge light of Runway 19R (international runway) of the Murtala Muhammed Airport Ikeja, at about 7.00 pm on Saturday, October 2, 2004 but it is untrue and unfair, if not unkind, to insinuate that the disruption or outage was caused by the negligence of FAAN authorities and that the unforeseen incident raised security fears. The outage occurred due to the degradation of the airfield cables as a result of age.
As soon as this failure occurred, FAAN's engineers and technicians were mobilised for faultfinding and restoration exercise and the fault was rectified within one hour.
However, since the domestic runway was closed to traffic at the time for maintenance, during this restoration exercise the control tower routinely diverted aircraft to other airports. We also wish to state that this outage was isolated, as all other facilities on the runway were not affected.
The Authority truly regrets any inconvenience that unfortunate, though unforeseen, incident caused passengers, airlines and the general public. We are, however, happy to inform the general public that the rehabilitation of the international runway began on October 5, 2004, and the project includes the installation of a category III airfield lighting system.
O.N. Nnaekpe,
AGM (Public Affairs),
Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria,
Lagos
