Airport resumes operations after power failure

Operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Thursday returned to normal following interruption of a section of the runway lights on Wednesday night.

Flights at Kenya’s biggest airport were diverted and delayed on Wednesday evening after a power failure.

The power failure shut down the runway of JKIA for about six hours forcing flights to be diverted to Moi International Airport, Mombasa as engineers from the Kenya Airports Authority worked to restore power.

The Kenya Airports Authority said the control system referred to as the Constant Current Regulator (CCR) had developed a technical problem, resulting in an interruption to a section of the runway lights.

“The CCR maintains a constant electric current flow in circuits, leading to uniform brightness in runway lights” said Mr Dominic Ngigi, KAA’s Manager Corporate Affairs and Communication in a statement released on Thursday.

He said the KAA technical team responded immediately and worked tirelessly enabling operations to resume at 1.30 a.m this morning.

“Operations were affected from 7.30p.m, on Wednesday” he said “the team is currently carrying out the root cause analysis of why the CCR developed the problem.”

"KAA would like to re-assure all our air operators and customers that we remain committed to ensuring continuous operations at JKIA," said Mr Ngigi.

Four planes were diverted to Mombasa while aircraft that would have landed from Mombasa were delayed.

Flights that were diverted were two Kenya Airways flights from Paris and Amsterdam as well as a flight from London and a Fly540 flight from Juba, southern Sudan.