THE runway lighting system at Entebbe International Airport broke down on Saturday, prompting cancellation of several flights.
Civil Aviation Authority management said the failure of the runway edge lighting system forced night operations to be suspended. This caused delays in departure of flights and diversion of incoming ones to Nairobi, Kenya.
Airport officials said they notified other airports to cancel scheduled flights to Entebbe on the Saturday-Sunday night.
Passengers who had been scheduled to fly out of Entebbe were booked into nearby hotels and flown out yesterday morning.
The Kenya Airways flight leaving Entebbe at 19:55 (7:55pm) was cancelled. It departed yesterday morning at 6:53am.
The KLM flight from Amsterdam, which was supposed to land at Entebbe at 20:45 (8:45pm) on Saturday night, was diverted to Nairobi.
Egypt Air, which was supposed to land at 3:40am on Sunday, was notified not to take off from Egypt. It left later and landed at Entebbe at 7:55am yesterday. Rwanda Air Express was also notified to reschedule its flight from Kigali.
The Emirates flight from Dubai was scheduled to land at Entebbe at 20:54 (8:54pm) on Saturday night but was rescheduled to arrive at 16:00 (4:00pm) yesterday.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) public relations manager, Igni Igunduura, said yesterday he had not yet established what caused the failure.
In a brief telephone interview yesterday, Igunduura said, “Entebbe International Airport experienced a breakdown in the Airfield Runway Edge Lighting system on Saturday 4th November, 2006, which compelled all airport night operations to be suspended.
“The incident caused delays in departure of a number of flights from Entebbe and also diversion of others to Nairobi. However, the engineers have since fixed the problem and operations have resumed.
“The engineers will give us a full report of what happened. This is the first time we have had such a thing happen.”
