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Power outage puts ZIA in 2hr blackout

Staff Correspondent
Zia International Airport (ZLA) plunged into a chaos last night as an unprecedented 2-hour power outage shut down all airport operations leaving over a thousand passengers stranded, with some of them stuck in flights unable to land on dark runways.
Power went out in Terminal 1 around 9:45pm and emergency power generators failed to operate shrouding in darkness both departure and arrival halls with hundreds of passengers clueless about what to do under the circumstances.
All security gates were shut immediately after the power outage and no one was allowed to
leave the airport until power was restored.
The runways also did not have adequate lighting during the blackout. forcing one flight to circle above the airport for at least 10 minutes, and another three to delay their landings by hours.
Departures of four other flights were delayed by over two hours. The lights on the runways were powered by batteries after half an hour, allowing flights to cautiously depart and land.
Boarding bridges were also not operating, forcing hundreds of passengers on three flights to disembark for about an hour and a half.
"We were kept on the plane for over an hour after landing. It was pitch dark, we couldn’t see a tiling. Everything they tried failed and it seemed they had no idea how to handle an emergency situation," said a passenger stuck on board a flight of Malaysian Airlines that could not disembark its passengers.
Even after they got off the plane, all passengers grew restless as they saw no security around the dark corridors of the airport and later on at the baggage carousel, the passenger added.
"In my 32 years of working at Dhaka airports. I have never seen such an incident. It was truly frightening." said an airport official to The Daily Star.
Airport. Dhaka Electric Supply Company (Desco), and ZLA officials scrambled to get the power supply restored and managed to get the generators operating after two hours around 11.30pm.
A probe committee was formed to look into the incident, especially the reasons behind the failure to operate the alternative power generators, said Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) Chairman Air Commodore Sakeb Khan Majlish.
The CAAB chairman said due to a power failure in a grid of the power supply authority' the outage occurred, but did not explain the failure of the alternative generators.
Power to the airport is supplied bv Desco.
Desco Managing Director Saleh Ahmed told UNB that there was no problem in Desco's power lines.
" There might have been glitches in the airport's internal power system, "he said.