Blackout causes flight chaos

JAKARTA: Two successive blackouts at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Thursday forced the airport operator to divert foreign and domestic arrivals to other airports, officials said.

The power went out for about five minutes at 5:44 p.m. and for another two minutes at 6 p.m. The emergency Uninterrupted Power System (UPS) failed to work. As a result, said one Officer in Charge (OIC) at the airport who requested anonymity, the instrument landing system for both runways were knocked out of action.

Another OIC, Suseno, said that a large number of planes that were scheduled to land during the blackouts were diverted to other airports, including Juanda Airport in Surabaya. "We're still collecting data on the number of canceled landings."

Suseno did not elaborate on the cause of the blackouts and refused to say whether the airport operator, PT Angkasa Pura II, would issue an official statement. -- Antara