Runway lights malfunction at ‘new’ CJIA – American Airlines flight diverted

Aug 10, 2019 News

Passengers awaiting an American Airlines (AA) flight on Thursday night had to wait until yesterday after the plane was diverted. The management of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport Corporation (CJIAC) later confirmed that the runway lights went down.

The scene at the airport on Thursday night. (Photos courtesy of the Guyanese Critic Facebook page)

The runway lights at CJIA malfunctioned Thursday night forcing an American Airlines flight to divert to Trinidad.

According to the airport, the incident occurred at approximately 23:30 hours.
“…the Airport Runway Lighting System experienced a failure due to a slack cable connection. This temporary cable was installed to facilitate the works currently taking place on the extended section of the north-eastern runway,” it was explained.
CJIA’s workers immediately worked to deploy portable runway lights along the entire length of the runway, which facilitated the departure of Suriname Airways at 12:12 hrs.
“Caribbean Airlines flight BW 605 arrived from Port of Spain and landed at 02:12 hours. These portable runway lights comply with ICAO standards,” the airport disclosed.
The main runway lighting system has since been repaired.
Passengers turned to social media to complain of the delays.
One passenger explained that the AA flight to Miami was scheduled to leave after 12.
“For hours, we did not get any communications. After a few hours, we were rerouted to the Arrivals area to wait for our luggage. We were told to come back today (yesterday) for a flight at 3:45pm.”
Passenger said they were told the runway lights had malfunctioned and the AA aircraft that had to pick them up could not land.
There were photos of one passenger fainting.
There were also clashes between the AA workers and passengers.
According to one passenger, he was detained along with another person by security after being accused of taking photos of the scene.
A number of photos were circulated on the Guyanese Critic page on Facebook.
The passenger said he was threatened by a staffer with legal action.
The airport has been in the news for several years now.
The reason is simple. A major expansion that should have involved the building of a brand-new terminal building and longer runway has ended with Guyana getting far less than what it is paying for.
Funded and constructed by the Chinese, the project is seeing a renovated existing terminal building.
Works had to be abandoned from the north side of the runway to the south after the Chinese contractor ran into soil problems. There are complaints about the inflated price on the Bill of Quantities on the contract and even about the quality of work.
Though Guyana has ended up paying the same money – US$150M for an grossly altered project, there is little evidence of sanctions against the contractor.
The airport was recently flooded in some sections because of rains.