Airport's radar on the blink again
Multa Fidrus and Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang/Jakarta
Around 15 hours after the radar came back online, another radar breakdown affected air traffic control at the country's main airport, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, west of Jakarta, on Friday morning.
The second incident delayed 113 flights for over seven hours and left thousands of passengers stranded at the airport.
Airport operator PT Angkasa Pura head Risman Nuryadin said that the breakdown was unusual as even the back-up system had failed.
"We're still trying to find the answer," he said. "Why did it happen during peak hour when about 700 flights were trying to take-off or land."
The National Air Carriers Association (INACA) economic commission head Jaka Pudjiono echoed Risman's statement on the failure of the back-up system.
Risman said the airport operator had started to upgrade all computer systems in 1997 and completed the process two years later. The airport's main data computer and its back-up are connected with the radar to enable air traffic controllers access to key flight data.
Since Thursday's breakdown from 12:50 p.m. to 3 p.m., the main data computer has not worked as normal. On Friday, it broke down again from 8:10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The incident forced some flights to be rerouted to Halim Perdanakusumah air base in East Jakarta, including an airplane carrying the People's Consultative Assembly speaker Amien Rais, who had just returned from campaigning for the People's Mandate Party (PAN).
From about 3 p.m., officers resorted to a manual air traffic control system and were able to direct 90 airplanes in take-off. The remaining 23 airplanes were forced to wait due to the breakdown.
"The radar functioned normally but it could not deliver information on flights to the main data computer due to the computer's malfunction," said airport operator PT Angkasa Pura spokesman Wasfan.
He added that the cause of the damage to the eight-year-old computer system was under investigation. He pointed out that the breakdown had nothing to do with bad weather and heavy rain.
Head of public relations and international affairs for the Ministry of Communications, Mochammad Syukur, said that the system failure was possibly due to the age of the computers.
He added that the government should urge the airport's management to replace the existing computers.
A passenger of national carrier Garuda Indonesia, Suyoto, who had arrived from Denpasar, Bali, in the afternoon, complained that the plane had hovered above the airport for more than 30 minutes before landing.
"It's my first such experience and I hope it will never happen to me again," he said, rushing to attend a business meeting.