Power outages at airport cost KQ a fortune: Naikuni

Recent power outages at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport have cost the national carrier “a lot of money”.

Kenya Airways managing director Titus Naikuni said that they now have to reroute all passengers who missed connections to their destinations at no extra cost.

Where there are no immediate connections, Kenya Airways is providing passengers with hotel accommodation and booking them on the first available flights to their destinations, he added.

Mr Naikuni blamed the Kenya Airports Authority and Kenya Power for the power hitches at the airport.

Stable and consistent

“We have lost a lot of money and this cannot be allowed to continue. It is the responsibility of the Kenya Airports Authority to ensure that power supply at the airport is stable and consistent,” Mr Naikuni said.

Monday’s 7pm power failure at the airport was the third in 36 hours and Kenya Airways diverted three flights to domestic and regional airports.

Flights KQ121 from Rome and KQ763 from Johannesburg were diverted to Mombasa International Airport, while flight KQ500 from Libreville was diverted to Entebbe International Airport in Uganda.

Flight KQ613 from Mombasa to Nairobi was on the runway in Mombasa.

KAA managing director Stephen Gichuki said the power failure was caused by an underground fault on the high voltage cable that had caused a blackout on Sunday.

“The airport has two independent feeder power lines from Kenya Power; the earth fault caused both the main and back-up power lines to trip. The back-up generators came on but failed to load power due to the same fault,” Mr Gichuki said.

The airport has four back-up generators — two 1,400 KVA generators and two 1,000 KVA generators — which fire up whenever there is no power from the Kenya Power grid, he said.

KAA is to buy three more generators that will be dedicated to essentials — the runway, taxiways and control tower. Mr Gichuki said everything will be in place in 15 months.

Internal circuit

Kenya Power communications officer Migwi Theuri blamed the airport’s internal circuit for the power failure.

“We supply power to a sub-station at the airport and we do not manage their internal cabling,” Mr Theuri said.

The 14 flights diverted to Mombasa, Entebbe, Kigali and Dar es Salaam will land in Nairobi. KAA and Kenya Power engineers restored power at the airport by early morning on Tuesday.

Kenya Airways spokesman Chris Karanja declined to say normality had resumed until the night fell and the runways were lit.

JKIA is the largest airport in East and Central Africa, and is a focal point for aviation activity in the region.