V.I. Port Authority engineers and maintenance staff continue to search for the cause of a power failure on the Cyril E. King Airport’s runway Tuesday night, officials said in a statement from the authority Friday.
According to airport manager Jose Nazario, the electrical breakers that powered the runway lights tripped and shut off all lights on the runway for 1-1/2 hours. Two flights from San Juan were diverted and one American Airlines flight was delayed for an hour and 20 minutes. The power failure did not affect any of the airport’s other electrical systems.
This is the first time this has ever happened at the King Airport, and it has not happened again since Tuesday night, according to VIPA acting Executive Director David Mapp. Port Authority engineers informed Mapp yesterday the cause for the outage is still unknown, he said.
"Our engineers and electricians are continuing to troubleshoot the system and are monitoring it on a daily basis," Mapp said. "We contacted our airport consultant, URS Corporation, and we have scheduled the electrical engineers to perform a complete assessment of the electrical system at the King airport next week."
