Power failure at IGI airport hits flights

The flight operations at the Terminal 3 (T3) of Indira Gandhi International Airport here were hit for almost four hours due to disruption in power supply, leading to delay of over 40 flights on Sunday morning.

The swanky Terminal 3, which completed its first anniversary this July, was in virtual darkness between 1.25 am and 5.45 am, official sources said. This led to the delay in schedules of most of the international flights arriving and departing from the IGI Airport.

The power disruption affected the check-in and baggage handling system and forced the airline staff to do the check-in, manually. Even heavy generators, installed as a back-up for such emergencies, could not help restore power.

There had been complaints of major chaos in the night as passengers refused to enter the terminal and a few had been left stranded without information.  “On August 7, due to a fault at a power sub-station the power supply was disrupted at T3 between 0125 hours to 0545 hours. However, the power supply was fully resumed at 0546 hours,” a DIAL spokesperson said. The problem started when one of the power transformers that supplies power to T3 tripped due to an electrical fault.

The power supply to entire building was disrupted and operations of baggage handling system, passenger boarding (aero) bridges, piers, escalators and travelators came to a standstill, airport officials said.

The passengers had a harrowing time standing for hours in queue to complete the check-in process as airlines had to resort to manual check-in. A total of 66 departing flights - 25 international and 41 domestic - out of the total 75 departures witnessed an average delay of two hours, the spokesperson said, adding 11 arriving flights - 10 international and 1 domestic - out of the total 34 flights witnessed an average delay of 20 minutes.