Lights failure closes Polonia for 7 hours

Lights failure closes Polonia for 7 hours

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

Flights returned to normal at Polonia Airport in Medan, North
Sumatra, on Sunday after a fault in the runway illumination
system forced the airport to close for almost seven hours.

On Saturday evening, a number of incoming flights were
diverted to other airports, including Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Canceled flights that had been scheduled to depart on Saturday
evening were rescheduled to Sunday.

The head of the Polonia airport management firm, PT Angkasa
Pura II, Col. Adi Supranto, said on Sunday that domestic and
international flights had returned to normal as the lighting
system fault had been repaired.

The breakdown blacked out the airport's runways from around 8
p.m. on Saturday until 2 a.m. on Sunday.

"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time Polonia
Airport has had to be closed because of a fault in its lighting
system. But it's all fixed now," he told The Jakarta Post on
Sunday.

He said it had taken several hours to repair the fault, which
had been caused by a short circuit.

However, he declined to say whether an earlier three-hour
downpour had contributed to the problem.

The airport's reopening on Sunday was greeted with relief by
passengers and those awaiting the arrival of passengers.

"Thank God my daughter finally arrived at Polonia today. I was
really worried last night after her flight had to turn back to
Malaysia," said Syafaruddin, a resident of Helvetia district,
while leaving the airport with his daughter, who had just arrived
on board an Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur.