Airport systems crash leaves flights up in the air
Airport systems crash leaves flights up in the air
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
A radar malfunction on Thursday delayed around 80 flights for
over two hours at the country's main airport, Soekarno-Hatta
International Airport in Cengkareng, west of Jakarta, and left
thousands of passengers stranded.
Airport operator PT Angkasa Pura spokesman Syahrial Syam said
that due to bad weather and heavy rain, some airplanes were
rerouted to Halim Perdanakusumah airbase in East Jakarta.
Angkasa Pura technical and operational manager Effendi claimed
that the incident was the first such case at the airport.
In a similar 1998 case, however, over 100 flights were delayed
because of an electrical disruption that affected the airport's
radar encoder.
In Thursday's incident, a computer malfunction at 12:50 p.m.
blanked out radar screens, leaving air traffic controllers unable
to access key flight data.
Effendi said the officers were forced to resort to a manual
air traffic control system.
"We apologize to all passengers who were stranded at the
airport due to the breakdown," he said.
Some flights were able to take off at around 3 p.m., directed
by the manual system. The radar came back online at around 5 p.m.
National carrier Garuda Indonesia spokesman Pujobroto said 16
domestic and two international flights were disrupted by the
breakdown.
"We hope the airport operator would be able to fix the radar
quickly, otherwise the delay would cause a domino effect in our
flight schedule," he said.
Effendi said the radar breakdown affected all flights to and
from the airport.
"We have informed all airports across the nation of the
problem so they can delay take-offs until the system is back to
normal. We also wanted to keep the number of circling airplanes
down," he said.
Airport head Risman Nuryadin said the breakdown was caused
because the airport was overloaded with flights.
"It's just like a computer. When it has too much data, the
system will crash," he said.
Chaos did not erupt from the delay, as the passengers were
well-informed about the problem.
"It's not a problem to wait. It's saver. If an airplane is
forced to fly without proper handling, it could crash," said
Sonny, who was heading to Hong Kong.