Sorry for you if you were flying in or out of Cape Town on Sunday night. While the lights stayed on in the airport’s central terminal, a power outage affected runway lights and other essential airside services, forcing the airport to halt take-offs and divert incoming flights.
In a post on social media site X on Sunday night, the Airports Company of South Africa reported a ‘power supply challenge impacting runway lights, airside fire rescue and air traffic navigation services. As a result, flights are not able to land or depart. Technicians are on site trying to establish the cause of the power outage and resolve the challenge as soon as possible.’
Cape Town International Airport is Africa’s third-largest airport, and the outage led to many delays and diversions. Delta’s DL211 to Atlanta only departed at 10.57 pm, nearly 90 minutes after its scheduled departure of 9.30 pm, while the late-night KLM departure to Amsterdam was cancelled after the inbound aircraft had to divert to Johannesburg. Numerous domestic flights were diverted to Gqeberha’s Dawid Stuurman International Airport, impacting hundreds of passengers.
In later social media posts, ACSA later confirmed that runway lights and navigational aids were returned to service at 1 am, allowing for safe aircraft landings.
Look out for these new routes into Cape Town from Air Botswana!