Nassau International Airport was thrown into a state of chaos over the holiday weekend after a broken radar system “devastated operations at NIA and affected thousands of travellers in and out of Nassau.
Operations were expected to begin to return to normal last night after technicians from the Department of Civil Aviation and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration completed their repairs.
The inoperable system, which one airport official attributed to “maintenance problems,” cut the normal flow of air traffic into Nassau significantly, affecting an estimated 6,000 travellers on Monday and stranding around 350 passengers who were forced to spend the night in the US departure lounge.
The broken radar system, which was last night described as “practically new,” also caused major safety concerns.
It caused some flights to be cancelled and others to be unexpectedly diverted to Miami International Airport.
“The airport was full to capacity, so there was no room. Basically everybody was lying on the floor, the cafeteria lines were from one end all the way to the next side of the airport; it was just chaotic,” one passenger told The Bahama Journal.
“The tourists had no money for hotel rooms and they had nowhere to go. It was a mess.”
Idris Reid, acting general manager of the Airport Authority, told The Bahama Journal yesterday that technicians from the Department of Civil Aviation and the US Federal Aviation Administration had completed the installation of the necessary parts by early afternoon.
“We are anticipating that [the radar] will be operational by 2pm [Tuesday],” said Mr. Reid, who added that the repair would immediately cut back on the time of flight delays.
The radar system reportedly blinked off around 7pm Christmas Eve, forcing air traffic controllers to resort to an older, slower system of landing aircraft safely. It reportedly took several hours for technicians to determine that several parts had burned out.
Replacement parts arrived from the FAA by early yesterday morning, according to airport officials.
The malfunction did not shut down the airport, but the “procedural approach” delayed flights by hours, officials reported.
Under the procedural approach, pilots are required to constantly report their altitude and position to the control tower by radio.
As a safety precaution, there is a 20-mile distance between aircraft, as opposed to a five-mile distance under radar operations.
“International civil aviation rules require that the flights be separated by particular distances when there is no radar, and so the effect of that separation has been very bad on us,” Mr. Reid said.
“It had a very devastating effect, because it meant that flights going in and coming out of [NIA] would have been delayed for long periods.”
A source familiar with operations at the airport said that officials have known “all along that there’s been a problem with maintenance, but it’s been ignored.”
The source also said that there had been “talk” around the airport that workers responsible for maintaining the control tower may have been unhappy with their industrial contract, and that the breakdown may have been the result of some type of industrial action.
Airport managers spent the entire weekend trying to console frustrated travellers, some of whom vowed that they would never return to The Bahamas.
“It was literally a nightmare,” said the source.
A charter operator who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the broken radar impacted everyone, “big time.”
The effect could be felt all the way in Miami, where scores of airline passengers who expected to be in Nassau by Monday night found themselves unexpectedly in the South Florida airport.
Nine Miami to Nassau flights – seven American Eagle, two Gulfstream – were cancelled on Monday, and three flights from other cities bound for Nassau were diverted to Miami, The Miami Herald reported yesterday.
An American Airlines spokesman said a total of 19 American Eagle flights from all cities bound for Nassau were affected. From 10am Monday until late afternoon, no American flights landed in Nassau, he said. Flights then resumed, but then had become so backed up that some passengers were forced to spend the night in Miami.
For the passengers that did manage to land, they had to wait for a long period before receiving clearance.
A couple flying in from Montreal, Canada on Christmas Day said that their aircraft circled in the air for about an hour before it was able to land.
“We couldn’t figure out what was going on. I saw the entire island of [New Providence] from the plane over and over and over again,” the female passenger said.
A concerned caller who spoke with The Bahama Journal yesterday said that when she dropped her daughter off to the airport yesterday morning, although flights were taking off, planes were circling the airport.
Another caller said that her daughter’s flight from Florida to Nassau was forced to return to Tampa yesterday after circling the island for about an hour.
“What annoys me, not only with The Bahamas but a lot of other places is that we believe in buying things but we don’t believe in maintaining things,” said the caller.
By: Erica Wells, The Bahama Journal
