By Buba Gagigo
Two international flights, Brussels Airlines and Asky Airlines, were diverted to Dakar, Senegal, on Saturday due to unstable electricity supply at Banjul International Airport in The Gambia.
The Director General of the Gambia Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Nfansu Bojang, attributed the incident to power instability caused by the national utility company, NAWEC.
“NAWEC was not stabilized. When we switched to them, after three minutes, they would go off. We have switched to our system again. Because of that back and forth, we decided to isolate NAWEC for the meantime, and Air Brussels was due to land. When they heard about it while in the air, they aborted approach and continued to Dakar. I spoke to the NAWEC MD. It is because they were off the whole day. And when they came dragging, it was tripping the line to the airport,” Bojang explained.
The GCAA DG further elaborated that the power outage was a result of scheduled maintenance by NAWEC.
“NAWEC took off the electricity since 8:15 am because of scheduled maintenance. We have been using our generators since then. When they came on, they were not stabilized for quite some time. This resulted in both Brussels Airlines and Asky Airlines landing in Senegal, but now about 35 minutes ago, they (NAWEC) notified us that they are stable. The airport is on NAWEC now, and we are fully powered. But we want to give it some time before we call them (The airlines that landed in Dakar). But hopefully, in the next 30 minutes they will be here.” he said.